


Jazz

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alcohol, Arc: Shinto Shrine Torii's Surprising Code c0491-0493 | e0411-0412 (Meitantei Conan), Attempted Murder, Background Relationships, Blood, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Blood and Torture, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, British Politics, Brutal Murder, Catholicism, Character Death, Character Study, Church of England, Clubbing, Comedy, Crimes & Criminals, Dark Comedy, Developing Relationship, Drugs, Drunk Sex, Dysfunctional Family, Established Relationship, Execution, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Issues, Family Secrets, Father-Son Relationship, Gay Sex, Horror, Insanity, Jazz - Freeform, Jazz Age, Lesbian Sex, M/M, Murder, Murder Kink, Murder-Suicide, Murderers, Neo-Paganism, Original Character(s), Paganism, Past Relationship(s), Platonic Relationships, Politics, Power Dynamics, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Psychotropic Drugs, References to Drugs, Relationship(s), Roman Catholicism, Romantic Comedy, Secret Relationship, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, Shinto, Shower Sex, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Underworld, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 48
Words: 26,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23592850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: Wen Junhui runs a Jazz club with Xu Minghao as his prized band singer; through their doors comes all sorts of the earths afflictions. Hong Jisoo whose Father stole £5,000,000 of WWII aircraft from Papua New Guinea, the heavily flawed but beautiful Yoon Jeonghan with his family been bent since the 1850's, Vernon and Sofia Chwe with their political shit-stirring, and the misdeamours they all make a market out of. This probably will be edited (this summary, it's ghastly)
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan, Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Xu Ming Hao | The8, Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan, Jeon Wonwoo/Kim Mingyu, Jeon Wonwoo/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi, Jeon Wonwoo/Yoon Jeonghan, Lee Chan | Dino/Yoon Jeonghan, Wen Jun Hui | Jun/Xu Ming Hao | The8, Wen Jun Hui | Jun/Yoon Jeonghan, Xu Ming Hao | The8 & Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 21
Kudos: 24





	1. The Beginning Of The Jazz Evening

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pebbleunknown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pebbleunknown/gifts).



> This is a steadily published gift for Pebbleunknown. There is two writers I take a lot from: Davide Ebershoff and Emile Zola. We have "Jazz". It's quite a paradox of what I reflect as my art and what I perceive of their magic. It's quite Tegwin Huws-ish; cold, absurd, terrifying, stark, animalistic, realistic, funny, British, mesmerizing. Completely transcendent.  
> I got this feeling about you, and, suddenly, this work begun to spin out of my fingertips. I do hope you like it. I'm working on it every single day - due to the COVID-19 lockdown, I have to type everything on my phone because I can't have internet on my laptop in the mountains. I've got 30 chapters written, but I have to type them all! Tell me what you think; feedback is my lifebloid at the moment. Feedback from you, too, Pebbleunknown :)
> 
> Happy reading

Minghao was the best singer on the South Korean jazz scene. He was almost scarily thin with a mullet and a curtain fringe; he was sensual and graceful and sarcastic. Old, old, cutting scars lime the underside of his left firearm and one scar - barely perceptible - on the back of his left hand. Minghao has technically bought by a man called Wen Junhui; he sang in Junhui's jazz nightclub, notorious for it's exclusivity, it's secrecy, it's androgeny amongst all else in that country. People became whoever they wanted to; and all sorts of people came through Junhui's doors. The Wen's wielded a very large stick. Until they had died, leaving Junhui by himself. Minghao was the best singer of all past in Junhui's club. Junhui himself always put a intense focus onto Minghao.

Minghao made the world shine.

"He'll have no time to regret..." Minghao sung, one hand holding the stand of the microphone, the other holding the back of the curved 30's style microphone in the palm of his hand. His vlive was gothic and striking, and every single one if the artists, drug users, mentally I'll, broken-hearted, mesmerizing, beautiful, underworld, ugly, and homosexual in the club looked up from their glasses of red and white wine and the whiskey in rocks in crystal tumblers. Not only was Minghao striking as a performer, but he had a very cruel smile, a glint in his eye. Junhui watched the beautiful women appraise him, their chins raised gently and their dark, Mediterranean eyes searching across the Chinese man's skin. Red lips parting; breathing out their caught breath of Cuban cigarette smoke from their lungs. The underworld men - young and old - tapped their thick-knuckled fingers in a silent beat against the white table-cloths of their half moon booths as they listened to the sound of Minghao's song. Junhui could always tell if they approved or not. The son of one of them came over to the bar and ordered a fresh drink for his Father. Junhui went over to talk to him.

"How are you, beautiful?" Junhui leant against the bar and smiled at Yoon Jeonghan whose eyes slid across gracefully to meet his. Jeonghan's mouth turned up ever so slightly at the side. Jeonghan was beautiful, bit be was flawed. He had a scar that ran down one side of his face; from the corner if his left eye to the left corner of his mouth. The cut which had been red and vicious had faded to dusty pink, and was now silvery white. You couldn't always notice it, but, at that time - all the time - Junhui saw it. He never missed the cruelty of it. Jeonghan's Father had often-times sworn to hurt him, but the day that someone had taken the knife to Jeonghan's face, Jeonghan's Father had exploded in a fury that saw the offenders grandfather killed. The body of the man was never found. No one in the whole wide world talked of it. Despite Jeonghan's scar, he had long black hair, outwardly-curving cheekbones that were gaunt and shadowed beneath. His eyes were slanted but no so severe as his friends and a soft mouth. His body was thin but strong. He was in a black suit with a white button-up shirt. No tie. Junhui's eyes moved pleasantly over Jeonghan's face and body. 

Jeonghan chucked his chin lightly at Junhui. "The Glasweigan has just come in." 

Junhui rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Fat cunt." He murmured under his breath if the Scottish multi-millionaire,only gotten rich due to old family money which he invested in Dow Jones stock market shares in the 80's. Jeonghan chuckled, barely imperceptibly. 

"You always take his money." Jeonghan commented.

"Of course I do; you wouldn't believe how much a single pound Stirling translates to in this countries currency, let alone when he spends with me £3000 in one night." Junhui replied. The bar-tender served up Jeonghan's Fathers drink. He retreated to the servants and employees rooms below the bar where the staff hung out and drunk when they weren't needed. Or when a fight broke out. Jeonghan ran his index fingertip around the rim of the whiskey tumbler. 

"He's got a Jewish bitch with him." He told Junhui. Junhui hummed. He surveyed his club across the raised floors and the second story stairwell. 

"Funny that. I always thought he was pretty anti-semetic." He remarked. Jeonghan's chest jumped with a silent laugh, looking down to the bottom of his Father's whiskey.

"Must be gold traders. She's hideous." Jeonghan added. He looked to Junhui silently before moving back from the bar to his Fathers booth. Junhui was curious now. Jewish, eh? 

He wanted to see if she looked like Amy Winehouse. Junhui's eyes widened when he found a woman that looked none to different to Irons Shayk besides the Glasweigan share-holder Phineas Ramsey. Junhui moved over to the Yoon's booth.

"Serbian Jew." He commented quietly. Jeonghan's Father's eyes twinkled. The whiskey and Minghao's singing was warming his blood. The man invited Junhui around to their place tomorrow night. Junhui smiled and accepted. After the night ended at half-one, he told Minghao outside at the back of the club. Dirty city rain poured down onto them.

Minghao laughed. "Put a machine gun into the boot of the rolls Royce and tell me what their place looks like." He told Junhui, leaning out of the drivers window of his Aston Martin. Junhui grinned, and promised. He and Minghao gazed up st each other for a moment before they cane together slowly. Junhui's mouth brushed against Minghao's cheek. 

"Goanna regret it..." Minghao sang so softly with a slight waver to the end of his words that Junhui's whole body stopped fully functioning for a second. Minghao smiled up at Junhui, before driving away from the back alley behind the club, the cobblestones filthy and black, covered in lichen, mould, tyre grease and cigarette butts. 


	2. The Yoon's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junhui visits the Yoon family for dinner

When Junhui arrived st the Yoon's property, he was automatically delighted. He came to a set of cast iron gates with thick hedging either side in his Rolls Royce. A Slavic looking man with thick black hair and a similar beard came out to meet Junhui. The driveway was three-hundred-meters long, and lined with towering Acorn trees; cream-stone gravel crunched beneath the tyres of the Rolls Royce. The property had been bought and designed and otherwise cultivated by Jeonghan's great-great grandfather and his brother who had dealt trade with the UK in the 1880's. It was utterly beautiful, even after being invaded by the Japanese in World War II. Junhui grinned broadly at the sight of the Yoon's house. Junhui tried to find a way to properly think of it; it looked British. That was it. Bit what was it more akin to? It wasn't Tudor, it wasn't Monastic, it wasn't Georgian, it want Neo-Gothic or Victorian revival. It was classical, but it - Junhui hadn't wanted to describe it like this, for how cheap and uneducated it sounded - but the manor architecture looked like that of that program on the television, Downton Abbey. Junhui chuckled to himself. How pathetic a attempt at description. But the manor was bloody well near the size of the Welsh property as well. Minghao had told Junhui that; Downton Abbey was actually a old manor home in Caernarvonshire in North Wales, not Midland-England as it was portrayed. As Junhui parked out the front, a tall and well-built Serbian man in his mid-fifties cane out to greet him. He wire an impeccable black suit, and he introduced himself to Junhui as Chakan. Chakan was the head of the staff at the Yoon's property. Junhui thought it was interesting that Chakan termed it like that; he thought the property would have a given name. Like all the estates did in the UK. Chakan took him around to the back of the manor and brought him in through the servants hall and quarters. Junhui smiled at a maid with a basket of washing in her arms, getting out of her way. But at his smile, she had nearly dropped the thing, stark-eyed. Chakan brought him up to Jeonghan's rooms, and shook Junhui's hand. Chakan's grip was powerful, his skin absurdly rough.

"No getting up to mischief." The Serbian's eyes went up and down Junhui's body. Mischief was a completely different word in this house. When Chakan requested no mischief, he was asking for no dead or otherwise mutilated body to be found in the bath-tub in the en-suite bathroom. No person to be water-tortured in the shower after been strangled and whipped with a leather belt in the bedroom's study.

Junhui slipped into Jeonghan's room silently. The door to the en-suite bathroom was open. Junhui saw Jeonghan. His hands gripped the edge of the vanity and he looked at himself sightlessly in the mirror, mutilated and lost in his own thoughts. Jeonghan was dressed, but it looked as though he wad wondering if he had the will to be able to make his body go downstairs and be sociable, his Father and Uncle looking over him, like vultures.

"Did you ever want to get it covered up?" Junhui asked, looking at Jeonghan by looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. As embarrassed colour filled Jeonghan's face, the scar stood out, but it's shade of white deepened to a rose-pink colour. Junhui found that interesting, rather than disturbing. "Some sort of surgery?" 

"Nothing could ever have cut it up." Jeonghan looked vulnerable and ashamed and angry. Junhui moved over closer towards him. Jeonghan's eyes flashed viciously. Junhui had no doubt in the world that Junhui would clock him. Despite Jeonghan's androgynous, his femininity, he was sly and jealous and bittersweet. If he was a girl, it would have been screaming, crying, perfect storms, nails turning to talons to rip down someone's skin, a knife hidden in the under-wire of a bra. With him being a man, it was nasty fist-fights and corrupt revenge and horrific scenes unfolded. Junhui remembered being witness to one. But the time he blinked - a nanosecond - all of it was gone.

"I wish I could give you my set of eyes." Junhui said. "I know your eyes find it hard sometimes." Jeonghan's mouth curled brutally, and one of his hands came up, seized Junhui by his throat, and shoved him up against a wall. It was rough, but Junhui wasn't in pain, even though Jeonghan's hand was tight on his throat. Junhui's head tilted to the side slightly. "I wish I could really get you to understand that you're fine - so fine - but I know you'd find that disconcerting." 

Jeonghan's grip was removed. He smoothed down the front of Junhui's shirt and fixed right the lapels at the front of Jeonghan's dinner jacket. "You're not my brother. Don't say things like that to me when it's no place if yours to even look at me and merely think the thoughts you do." Jeonghan said. Junhui's hand wrapped around Jeonghan's jaw, a thumb just beneath Jeonghan's cheekbone. Jeonghan went still enough, but his dark eyes looked at Junhui. With his face now the way it was, he had no chance of dating. No chance of ever having anyone. Because of that, Jeonghan wasn't used to being touched. Because no one was ever like that to him, for him, put of want for him. Need for him. Junhui felt desperately sorry for Jeonghan; for how lonely he had to be now, and for the rest of his life. Now wonder he exploded the way he did; he was rendered vicious and in-human. He was revolted at himself. 

"You're alright." Junhui said to Jeonghan quietly. "You're ok, love. Just breathe. We're ok." 

He successfully cut Jeonghan open. Jeonghan's eyes turned hot and damp and unfamiliar. 

"Get out of my life." Jeonghan said. A snarl bit at the edge of his tone. Junhui shushed him. 

"Don't talk to me like that." Junhui said. He drew Jeonghan's body into his arms. "Hold me. Come on."

Jeonghan's body was cold and akin to a mannequin in his arms. Junhui repeated his words again. This time, Jeonghan's arms wrapped around Junhui's. Jeonghan never got this either. Junhui's tongue ran over the backs of his front teeth inside his mouth. It was so hard. So fucking hard.

Jeonghan suddenly shoved his body away, and he disappeared from the bathroom through his bedroom and out into the landing and then down the stairs. Junhui closed his eyes, hearing the thump! thump! thump! of Jeonghan's feet going down the stairs. He checked himself in the mirror, then went down after Jeonghan. 

It was like nothing had ever happened. Jeonghan was a brilliant actor. Junhui gave him that. 

But, then, Junhui was a brilliant actor, too. He ate dinner with the Yoon men, and nearly choked three times from the hilarious remarks and tales that Jeonghan's Uncle made. Jeonghan smiled, knowing them all, but he laughed properly when his Father put down some material. Despite the reality of them all, the elder Yoon's were dirty and rude and comical. They made Junhui laugh until he couldn't breathe properly. They were all damaged. It's a consequence of a little thing called life. And especially life like their's...what was it the Americans called all their sins and the destruction of their own people? 

Collateral Damage?

Junhui laughed silently at that term. Collateral Damage. That sounded about right. Killing themselves and their people. 

Minghao's jazz crooned in his head.

"And I'm kissing you  
Lying in my room  
Holding you  
Until you fall asleep  
And it's just as good  
As I knew it would be   
Stay with me  
I don't want you to leave." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will make a note when I can think *hollow*


	3. M. Hong Calling, Sir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junhui organizes full Joshua to meet the very miserable Jeonghan, and Minghao assures Joshua there are plenty of things that can be done with a microphone with WWIII breaks out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will make note when I can be an intelligent human being...*groan*

Junhui finished describing the Yoon's property to Minghao off the side-stage in the club. It was only mid-day. The club didn't open to nine 'o' clock, bit most people came in for their wine or for their jazz just before Midnight or after it. It was a culture, practically, at Junhui's club. The night-time wanderers. Minghao laughed. As proof, he showed Minghao a photograph that Chakan had taken of him and the three Yoon men outside the house. Minghao's mouth dropped open. He slid the black-tinted lens of his Lennon glasses down his nose. "Fucking hell." Minghao remarked.

Junhui smiled. "Do you approve?" He questioned.

"Oh, completely." Minghao gave his phone back to him. Junhui felt quite happy. 

"Boss!" Junhui excused himself from Minghao and went out to the front of the performance stage as one of his employees called for him. She was small-boned and pretty girl with a pock-mark scar on the tip of her jaw.

"A young M. Hong is wanting to call on you." The girl said. She was nicknamed Marya a few months ago by Minghao after they all found out that she could sing songs in Russian. The name stuck.

"Where have you put him, love?" Junhui asked.

"He's in the cloakroom." Marya replied.

"Is he indecently pretty?" Junhui quipped. A smile bloomed on Marya's face. 

"So, shall I get him, then, sir?" 

"No, no, answer my question first." Junhui grinned too. Marya sighed.

"He looks more like a girl than I do." Marya described Joshua Hong. Junhui burst out laughing. He jumped down from the stage, looped Marya's arm through his, shouted for Minghao to sing something, and he walked with the girl to the cloakroom of his club.

"Shua." Junhui greeted. He kissed Marya's cheek, demanded that Joshua kiss her too for good health, and, after the task was accomplished, Marya went downstairs, blushing, and Joshua looked a bit taken aback as well.

"You're insane." Joshua told him, rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth. 

"And you're Father stole £5,000,000 worth of World War Two aircraft from Papua New Guinea, so we're even." Junhui beamed.

When they came into the club's rooms itself, Minghao gave Junhui the finger. "What do you mean "sing something"?" Minghao asked oh him. "The bands not here, yet!"

"And neither is my first-born child, but things still go on!" Junhui retorted. Minghao's "What the fuck?" mixed with Joshua's "No one says that; you're not even dating anyone, are you".

"Want any lunch?" Junhui asked Joshua, putting him down in the best booth of the house. Coincidentally the Yoon's booth. Joshua looked at him.

"Do you still have that Danish chef that does that thing with the fish?" Joshua asked. Junhui nodded. Joshua agreed to having that. The chef mainly cooked dinner for the staff; most of the club's members and other customers didn't eat when in attendance. They just thought and cried and drank and sometimes danced. But the Yoons, the Scotsman, and eighteen others always had company and a request for a menu. Minghao miles shooting Junhui as he disappeared downstairs behind the bar. Minghao went over to the booth and sat with Joshua.

"And what have you been doing since the last time that I saw you?" He asked. Joshua grinned.

"Not much." He shrugged. He asked Minghao the same question. Minghao gave the same answer. Minghao meant his head against Joshua's shoulder; Joshua rested his head on top of Minghao's. 

A few minutes later, Junhui resurfaced from downstairs back in the club. He made a beeline straight for the Yoon's booth. 

"Hey, Joshy, I've got a proposition for you." Junhui spun a chair around from another table and sat on it, the back facing Minghao and Joshua. Junhui smiled broadly and rested his arms on top of one another along the chairs back. Minghao's stern "No, you don't" mixed with Joshua's, "Oh, fuck, what now?". Their heads still rested on the others one.

"No, no, hear me out, it's a great plan - legend plan." Junhui held his hands up. Joshua raised an eyebrow and Minghao rolled his eyes heavily. They all knew what this meant. "I know this really nice guy and he's really, really single and he's really, really hot." 

Minghao's eyes widened, and Joshua's chest flattened out of breath. Ok, scratch that, it appears that they had been mistaken. They thought Junhui was going to suggest that Joshua puts around to female friends of his that Junhui was going to put a pole-dancing room in his club and needed "performing artists". Or they thought he was going to suggest Joshua investing in a vineyard that was magically going to pop up out of nowhere in the South of France.

"I'm not gay." Joshua said. 

"Does the pop shit in the woods?" Junhui raised his eyebrows. Minghao and Joshua looked at him. Joshua's mouth was still half-open in protest, and Minghao's eyebrows had knitted together strangely.

"Well, he would if there was a bear chasing him." Junhui added in resolve. Despite themselves, Joshua and Minghao laughed.

"I'm not gay." Joshua repeated after they calmed down and Minghao praised Junhui's intellect. Or, rather, lack of it.

"Yeah, he's not either." Junhui said dismissively. "Still, I want you to meet him. Come back here next Thursday night at half-ten and make sure to shut up and make yourself look attractive." 

Joshua looked to Junhui, and then looked to Minghao.

"Don't worry, I'll look after you." Minghao promised, putting a hand on his arm. "There's plenty of violent things you can do with a microphone." 


	4. Meeting Joshua Hong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junhui sets up Joshua to be introduced to Yoon Jeonghan while Minghao arranges for a wardrobe change for Joshua and Jeonghan coaxed Jeonghan to not be shy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Here we have, Chapter Four. I hope you like it. I hope that chlamydia sketch isn't too distasteful

Thursday night came around. Junhui insisted Joshua hadn't dressed well enough.

"God, you look like a Gay trying to do Sexy Heterosexual." Minghao described it as. He didn't always agree with Junhui, but, this time, he did. To any other person Joshua looked utterly ravishing; black tie and black suit with a perfect white button-up shirt that complimented beautiful leather shoes and tailoring. But Junhui knew Yoon Jeonghan - as well as his Father, Uncle, Grandfather, Mother - the whole Yoon tribe, essentially. And what Minghao described is how the Yoon's would see it. Even though the tailoring was beautifully done, Joshua looked like no money in a suit and the and a deplorable sex life. In that, the Yoon's could read him like a magazine.

"Well, what the fuck do you suggest?" Joshua's skin went quite pink. 

"Lucky I keep a change of clothes in my car, don't I?" Minghao raised an eyebrow eloquently at Junhui.

"Yeah, but, unlike you, Joshua isn't anorexic and he hasn't got chlamydia." Junhui retorted. "I don't think he could fit into any of your stuff." 

"Since when did you have chlamydia?" Joshua hissed to Minghao. Minghao scoffed, crossing his arms.

His "I don't!" mixed with Junhui's, "A little while ago I kept seeing him itch his crotch and I got one if the waiters to check him -"

"Junnie!" Joshua exclaimed. "You made one if the bar-tenders give Minghao a gynecological assessment -"

"It wasn't hard, he was all red and swollen and sensitive to the touch." Junhui shrugged.

"Everyone can shut the fuck up, we need to work out Josh." Minghao said abruptly, moving his hands in a straight-lime gesture. "Josh, go downstairs and go into one of the changing rooms; one of the girls will show you. I'll grab something out of the Aston, give me a minute, hyung, ok?" 

Minghao went out to his car and popped the boot. He looked at the dry-cleaning bags in the boot. FORMAL - when Minghao checked inside, he realized that the tweed wouldn't be good on Joshua at all and it was definitely too small in the legs - MUM AND DAD'S PLACE - no, that was too casual - CLUB - no, fuck no, that was obscene. The last bag Minghao came to read CHRYSANTHE on the tag. Minghao flushed a very dark colour. Regret and renewed grief filled up his chest. Chrysanthe was the first girl he was sure he had even been in love with. They were the set of clothes from her place. Chrysanthe...the French jazz singer from Montmartre. Minghao tried not to remember her bronze-tanned skin and her freckles, red lip-sticker mouth and thick black eyebrows and hair. 

He picked up the clothes bag and rushed it back inside for Joshua. 

-

"Hey, beautiful, where's your Dad?" Junhui asked, slipping into the booth beside a catatonic-looking Jeonghan. Jeonghan's head turned slowly to the side. He acknowledged Junhui without looking at him, but rather at the edge of the booths seat. One side of Jeonghan's hair fell down in a curtain one side of his face. People danced on the floor to the sound of Minghao's singing.

"Ooo, she's in the rain..." 

The Jazz instrumental composition went bright and attractive and dreamy into the air.

"He's picked a fight with someone in Japan." One side of Jeonghan's mouth lifted. It was cruel and proud and excited; thought of the hunt.

"Wipe that smirk off your face, I want you to meet someone." Junhui said shortly. Jeonghan properly looked at him. The scarred side if his face was covered by his hair. Junhui tsked and tucked the curtain if hair behind Jeonghan's ear. Jeonghan's eyes went slightly glassy. "There we are..." Junhui remarked softly. "Keep it like that, don't shake the hair down." He removed himself from the booth, went downstairs, and collected Joshua. Joshua followed him nervously through the club, but when Junhui practically pushed him into the seat beside Jeonghan in the booth, Jeonghan's face was looking towards the stage, watching Minghao sing and the rest of the club dance. Aside from the music, the sound of knives and forks and clinking china and human chatter filled up the space. Junhui was glad that Jeonghan was the way he was; he nearly openly whistled at the beautiful sight if Jeonghan's face from the side-one profile in the dimly but entrancingly lit club floor, and how his scar was apparent, but it didn't stand out. He looked breathtaking. 

"Jeonghan, meet Joshua Hong." Junhui said, one hand on Joshua's shoulder, the other arm across the back if the booth. Jeonghan's head twisted to one side, glancing at Joshua, but, a nanosecond later, his eyes were locked in a gaze on Joshua's face, drinking him in. Joshua was similarly caught up. Junhui looked expectantly at him, but Jeonghan did not see anyone else. It became apparent that Joshua no longer noticed Junhui either. 

"Nice to meet you." Jeonghan's tone was quiet from shock. Joshua's eyes flickered to the scar on the side of his face for a moment, but then he looked at Jeonghan's mouth. 

"Nice to meet you, too." Joshua said. Junhui looked to the stage and caught Minghao's eye as he sung.

_"And you don't want to be no gothic revival_

_And yet you want to burn inside Hell's circle_

_Why don't you ever let it go_

_I'm asking you_

_Don't you never let it go..."_


	5. Liberal Party Funeral's With Organized Passion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junhui and Minghao attend the funeral of one of the biggest cunts in South Korea, accompanying their terrified friend, Choi Seungcheol, and getting a swinging salute from the Yoon's and other family parties

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, I've completed the field marshal course on being a twat, and I have presented this. And, yes, "cunt" is written in here a few times. I love using that word; because people get so offended by it - their face either fries or turns into that painting, "The Scream" - I use it all the time. I don't get offended as a woman by it. I often think women need to stop carrying on over it. The among of times by guy friends have nearly wet themselves because I've told a woman she's a cunt *laughing* oh, it's been amazing. Anyhow, enjoy this chapter, lovely :)

"Fuck, that's intelligent." Minghao snorted a laugh. 

"Incidental equation enough." Seungcheol shrugged. Minghao slapped his arm. 

"Bad boy." He quipped. He poured himself a shot of vodka and necked it. He wasn't drinking as such. But everytime Seungcheol opened his mouth, Minghao needed a urgent alcoholic recovery. 

"Ready to go, hyung?" Junhui came into the bar in his black suit and black coat and black leather gloves. Seungcheol nodded faintly. Minghao grinned at Marya and kissed her cheek; there had been a bit of a part last night, as could be described. One of the biggest cunts in South Korea had died; everyone had come around. The Yoon's, The Hong's, The Firth's, and then the rest - the Choi's, the rest of Jun's Wen family still alive, the Kwon's, the Jeon's, the Li's, the Lee's, The Kim's, The Boo's, The Chwe's. A whole avalanche of people, plus the guests they brought. Junhui had invited people from England he knew that were in East-Asia - The Jones's, The McDonnell's, The Tudur's and The Grey's.

Then Hitler turned up with Jaws and the party truly started. Hitler was the nickname of Christian, a true alpha-male man and the patriarch of the Tudur's who wielded a very big stick in England, and Jaws was a seven-foot-two anthropological wonder from Serbia, real name Vladimir Rostov Keil. He was nicknamed Jaws because he had a mouth that could strip paint off the walls, and in the mouth was about seven metal fillings. Hits of 1970's dentistry.

The main problem for Seungcheol attending this funeral was due to the dead man's granddaughter, a punishment of a woman who hated Seungcheol with a passion, and a ex-lover of their friend, Jeon Wonwoo, who had effectively sent her around the bend. Seungcheol was absolutely terrified of her. To the hilarity of Junhui and Minghao.

"Any of the Yoon's coming?" 

Minghao's "Only to shit on the deceased's grave, probably" mixed with Junhui's, "No, they wouldn't step inside a Catholic Church if their lives depended on it." 

"Josh'll be there?" Seungcheol checked. 

"'Course he will, he's a Christened Catholic in that Church." Junhui responded. Minghao cast a look over at him. He wondered how the hell Jeonghan was going to react when he found out Joshua was a bible-basher. The Yoon's went hunting with the Jeon's for Christians as a sport. There had been one incident in 2007 when the elder Yoons and Jeons had set a Church on fire. It got pinned on a Christo-Satanist Cult, perhaps for the better, but Minghao wouldn't put it past Jeonghan to get Wonwoo to put into work some "heathen practices" if he did bloody find out.

The funeral was downright sickening. People wept and spoke with heavy sniffles of what a kind and loving and well-respected man the deceased was. "He was a cunt." Minghao murmured when the Church service ended, believing more clergy-people's and Catholic hierarchy were present at the ex-politicians funeral than any other in the countries history. Seungcheol had sat in the pew between Junhui and Minghao. Everyone kept glancing at Minghao. It seemed that Minghao might just have been the first person to wear Coco Chanel lipstick, a fur coat, and Lennon glasses to a Catholic funeral. Minghao wondered why he had even been allowed into the Church grounds, let alone the Church itself. He had grinned widely, his arm looped through Junhui's, when he had seen one of the Yoon's black Range Rover's and Rolls Royce Phantom's parked out the front of the Church, just down the road from the gates. Junhui had waved cheerily over Minghao's head. Minghao had nearly kissed himself laughing as Jeonghan's Father gave the most hilarious but cheekily demonic look and twiddling wave of his fingers through the window, and Jeonghan in the passenger seat had blew them a kiss before sticking his middle finger into his mouth, sucking on it, and then putting it up into a bird gesture to the Church and about a hundred and twenty other Catholic cunts.

"He and Joshy won't last." Minghao remarked to Junhui as they walked down to the graveyard.

"Oh, don't you worry, they're made for each other." Junhui responded. He chuckled. "Everyone thinks you're a total faggot." 

"Everyone realizes I vote for the Labour Party, that's what." Minghao pushed his Lennon glasses further up his nose. "Where's Jaws and Hitler?" 

"Hitler won't come into a Catholic Church either, but - why are you asking?" Junhui surveyed the procession of people down to the graveyard. "All you have to do is look for a giant in a top-hat." 

"Jaws is wearing a top-hat?" Minghao echoed. 

"Oh, yeah, got to have some style when a Liberal politician gets cancer in his anal passage." Junhui pointed across the crowd; they had spotted Jaws talking...whatever it was, they were obviously very small, because Jaws was nearly bent over double-ways. They often joked Jaws had never settled down properly because he always forgot to look down to her height. 

Minghao laughed. People looked again. He smirked cruelly. He felt absolutely wonderful.

The day transformed exceptionally. The deceased's four-years-old grandson - who Junhui and Minghao were sure to be very, very, very gay when he grew up - was dancing around like an idiot on the edge of his Grandfathers grave and fell in. He had a severe concussion, and two broken arms with a buggered kneecap. Junhui and Minghao didn't stay for drinks afterwards, but, getting a lift in the Yoon's Rolls Royce Phantom and getting the Yoon's head staffer Chakan to take Minghao's Aston back to the club, they sat in the back with Jeonghan and Seungcheol and raised a toast to everything that had happened that day. 

It was absolutely fucking marvellous. 


	6. When The Dusk Comes Down Things Will Matter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeonghan and Joshua have their first kiss, Minghao pulls out Amy Winehouse, and Jaws throws someone across the Yoon's ballroom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day! Fuck, I'm a legend!   
> Now, Jeonghan's anxiety; frankly, who doesn't get a flash of it, especially when you're in the presence of someone that illuminates you? I'm not portraying Jeonghan as a mess, psychologically. He's just treading water.

Somehow, everyone - The Yoon's, The Hong's, The Firth's, and then the rest - the Choi's, the rest of Jun's Wen family still alive, the Kwon's, the Jeon's, the Li's, the Lee's, The Kim's, The Boo's, The Chwe's. A whole avalanche of people, plus the guests they brought. Junhui had invited people from England he knew that were in East-Asia - The Jones's, The McDonnell's, The Tudur's and The Grey's - ended up back at the Yoon's country manor. They held another party, but it wasn't as wild and as coloured as the previous nights. 

Jeonghan spent some time alone with Joshua after two hours of being present in his family and their guests company. He enjoyed Joshua's company. The feeling appeared to be mutual where the other man was concerned. 

They sat together on a bench beneath a hundred-years-old acorn tree in a section of garden that was simply twenty acres of grass moan as smooth as that of a bowling green. Jeonghan lowered the black tinted Lennon glasses on his face - they were like Minghao's, a gift from Junhui that Jeonghan very, very scarcely wore - and looked at the stars in the sky above him. 

He never had days like this. He never felt like this. 

Suddenly, even though Joshua was beside him, the feeling inside Jeonghan watered down until it crashed. His lips parted only a millimeter, breathing in silently through them. He looked across the garden, the fall dusk covering it. He couldn't hear anything around him except the memory of one of Minghao's jazz sings playing densely within his skull. 

_You're so fucking cold,_ a snarling, sarcastic, brutal voice told Jeonghan. Jeonghan felt cold. _You're so fucking cold, you cunt_ , the voice repeated. Jeonghan shrunk.

"Can you hear that?" Joshua asked. Jeonghan turned to look at him. He realized the song that he could hear was not a memory, but it was real. Jeonghan pressed his hand over his mouth, feeling too faint, his heartbeat fluttering wildly. A 1920's Danish waltzing-jazz played. Jeonghan could hear the laughter and the joy and the mirth of the party indoors. The gold light from the candles inside the ballroom stretched for ten meters across the lawn, shadows and reflection of the huge and expansive white French doors.

Both Jeonghan and Joshua began to hear Minghao sing. Soft, melodic vocalizations, before he started to sing in Mandarin. 

For Jeonghan at that moment, it felt crude, unfeeling, disgusting. He only wanted one song at the moment. That native Hangul heathen song. But he couldn't hear it. He wanted to find Wonwoo, but he didn't know where he was. His Father didn't completely approve of the Shaman, but, then, he didn't approve of Jeonghan been around other human beings as well. His Uncle thought it was ridiculous. His Uncle was the only reason Jeonghan was allowed outside at all. 

"Has the alcohol made you sick?" Joshua's caring voice asked. Jeonghan swallowed thickly. He shook his head, a bright smile on his face. 

"I'm so happy you're here." Jeonghan told Joshua sincerely. He took in a deep breath as Joshua smiled. 

"I'm happy I'm here, too." Joshua responded, his tone softer. He covered both of Jeonghan's hands with one if his, holding them. He smiled upwardly at the night sky. He made a comment about the weather been nice recently. Jeonghan shifted in closer to him. Joshua's eyes fell to Jeonghan's face, and then his lips. Joshua's free hand came up to carress the side of Jeonghan's face, the scarred side; his thumb traced over the scar. He told Jeonghan he thought he was beautiful, and moved in so close that Jeonghan was lost on him. 

Just as they went to kiss, a woman's scream echoed throughout the air. Jeonghan deflated rapidly. He meant against Jeonghan's chest, huddling into him, desperate for human touch - Joshua's touch - otherwise.

"Oh, no, Jaws has got the shits over something." Jeonghan groaned. Joshua chuckled softly. 

"All of a sudden, you're the saddest person in the world." His fingers went beneath Jeonghan's chin and topped his head back. Joshua pressed his mouth over Jeonghan's in their first kiss, and, unbeknownst to them, Jaws had just thrown a party guest across the room. Minghao and his band were carrying on like nothing had happened, except they switched from their Danisg waltzing-jazz to Amy Winehouse. Jeonghan's Dad brought out a world war two era machine gun to try and bring peace back while all the women screamed and burst into tears out of fright as Hitler added to the matter by waving a stock-whip around and whipping a M. Choi - Seungcheol's Dad - between his thighs. 

"He'll have no time to regret..." Minghao grinned openly at the chaos as he sung "Back To Black". 


	7. Chakan's Rule Of Thumb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the Yoon's funeral bash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be doing the morning after scenes for a few chapters instead of doing one big chapter - too much to type up on a phone in one go, at least 3000 words, Goddess, it's so much easier with a laptop - so, I hope you like it. I write these things to the most bizarre backgrounds - like NO ROME ft. The 1975 with the television playing the evening news, or listening to Indigenous Cymry bardoi or Lorde after Midnight in my studio *laughing* it's pretty crazy

Junhui had gone to sleep in the garden bed at the East Wing of the Yoon's manor, and was woken up by Chakan squirting him with a hose used for watering the roses. A tired but blissed-out looking Minghao stood beside him. Junhui's mouth fell open. Minghao was in the complete fucking nuddy. "All your friends want to see you." Minghao told Junhui with a wide smile on his face. 

"Only a few of these young men at one time, please." Chakan told Junhui, rather than asking him. 

"Why the fuck is he in the nuddy?" Junhui demanded of Minghao to Chakan, before looking to Minghao and demanding of him, "Why the fuck are you in the nuddy, Hao?" 

"I had a really nice night." Minghao's hands held each of his elbows, his head falling to one side, his eyes dreamy. Junhui scoffed, rolling his eyes. He got to his feet and followed Chakan inside and through the labyrinth architecture that was the Yoon's manor house. Chakan took him up to a suite, and, in there ready for him, was a hot bath, fresh clothes, freshly packaged soap, and a note written by Jeonghan's hand. Beside the note was a wad of monies, two inches thick.

"A present from Mr Yoon -"

"Uncle or Dad?" Junhui checked.

"Uncle, for your magnificent work at controlling M. Kiel last night." Chakan explained. It took Junhui a second to work out that Chakan meant Jaws. No one ever called him by his real name, his surname. And, if they did, it was once in a blue bloody moon. Junhui blinked. He felt ashamed of himself. He had "controlled" the very angry Jews by playing a film he had of Jaws now deceased wife, Ana-Helene, from their wedding five years ago. The sound of her voice had reduced Jaws into a quiet and wet-eyed mess. The sound of her laughing and saying about permanently needing to carry around a step-ladder so Jaws didn't have to become the hunchback of notre dame everytime he wanted a kiss even made Jeonghan's Uncle and Father stop yelling and waving guns about. It even calmed down Hitler from brandishing the stock-whip. 

"Is he ok?" Junhui asked. 

"Mrs Hong and a Mrs Lee looked after him with M. Tudur." Chakan confirmed. Junhui blinked as Chakan asked him a question. "Where do you believe I could find M. Hong? The younger? Only because if he doesn't bring Jeonghan back to where I can see him right now, I'll enlist the help of M. Kiel." 

Junhui swallowed thickly, the water if the bath steaming behind him. "Aw..." Minghao chuckled softly. He looked at Chakan. "The second Dad..." He said quietly.

"Are you on buckin' drugs?" Junhui asked, his eyebrows shooting upwardly. "Right, even if you are, do not go spreading that around. Mrs Yoon has not had a affair -"

"I'm not saying she has." Minghao chuckled again, un-disturbed. "I'm just saying." He looked dreamily up at Chakan. "Come on, M." Minghao put his arm through Chakan's. "Let's find Jeonghan-ah." 

_He's on fucking drugs_ , Junhui decided, staring long after then even when they had gone. 


	8. The No-Knickers Brigade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seungkwan makes an incest remark to Vernon, and they grapple on the hallway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter where Vernon and Seungkwan are first properly written. I've written them a lot more violent than they would be in real life, but I found it quite funny; imagine if somethingarather like that did happen. Or maybe I'm a cunt, I don't know *laughing* anyhow, here's your chapter, love

Vernon finished typing up the previous nights events on his laptop. His sister Sofia lay asleep beside him. The white nightie she was wearing had bunched up around her waist, and she had no knickers on. Vernon rolled his eyes at this, and Haf pulled the cloth down over het body twice before, but it had only wriggled back up as she had turned over in her sleep. He had tried pulling the covers up over her instead, but she had kicked them off slowly, over-heating. 

Boo Seungkwan then got a eyeful of Sofia's bare bottom as he pushed open the door to their rooms in the Yoon's manor. Vernon gestured for him to go back outside to the hall. He shut the lid of his laptop after saving the document and climbed out if bed. 

"When you said you were getting some new hobbies, I didn't realize you meant incest!" Seungkwan exclaimed quietly. Vernon rolled his eyes before slapping Seungkwan's face. 

"Shut up, you idiot." Vernon said just as quietly. "If Sofe hears that she'll be really, really upset." He groaned. "It's not my fault that she won't wear underwear, alright, God, please?" 

Seungkwan surrendered and apologised. He and Vernon talked for several minutes. Vernon asked if Seungkwan got any sleep after last night. "All I could hear was Mingyu and Minghao at it." Seungkwan groaned nearly silently, covering his face with his hands. "I eventually went off listening to this one James Arthur song on replay and now I don't know if it's changed me forever mentally or not." 

Vernon grinned. "Won't be a bad thing." He quipped. Seungkwan took one look at him and his hand shot out; he attempted to give Vernon a half-decent nipple cripple, but Vernon seized him first and brutally groped his crotch, practically clawing the balls off the other man. Seungkwan winced and sank down to the ground. Vernon had a fit of silent but nonetheless hysterical laughter. "Bugger you, I've won, fat-thighs!" Vernon wrung his fists in the air, but he sank down to the ground with his face contorted in pain as Seungkwan punched his own testicles in.


	9. Sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minghao shacked up with Mingyu for the night, and Chakan walks in on them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, trying to think of something to write...nothing, just for reference, shocks Jaws or Chakan. Absolutely nothing.

_**THE PREVIOUS NIGHT:** _

Minghao didn't get to bed until half-twelve that night - or, rather, morning. But he had had such a wonderful time. He had had a huge catch-up with his vest friend, Kim Mingyu, in-between songs. So much alcohol had been drunk...Minghao chuckled at the memory. Mingyu had been in Manchester in England for a couple of months, doing naughty things. Or so he had told Minghao. Mingyu had told him a fee stories that left him stitches. Joshua had been with them both for a bit before he went off to find and smog Jeonghan to within an inch of his life. Mingyu and Minghao had listened supportfully and touched while Joshua had planned out that he was definitely going to kiss Jeonghan for the first time that night. Minghao and Mingyu had saluted him with a bottle of Vodka and a bottle of Bollinger Champagne as he had embraced the plan and had buffered off through the crowdz head held high, black coat flapping. 

"They'll end up having sex in a hedge." Minghao had opined with a resigned sigh. Mingyu had nearly pissed himself laughing. 

"Maybe the second-tallest man in the room would appreciate it very much if you laid him a visit later on." Mingyu had said, twisting a ring around his finger and glancing a gaze at Minghao, whose whole focus settled on him. 

"Definitely." Minghao promised. Definitely it had been. Minghao had found out from a passing maid in the house where Mingyu's rooms were, but, then, she escorted him up through the labyrinth architecture, smiling all the while. When he had got inside Mingyu's bedroom and had locked the door, Minghao had nearly fallen over to find Mingyu naked, waiting for him. 

The sex had been amazing - absolutely breathtaking - to Minghao. Or maybe that was the effect of the drugs in his system. Ultra-strong headache tablets mixed with Bollinger...oh my God, that was a mix. Minghao had stayed up the whole night with Mingyu, his anorexically thin naked body on top of Mingyu's, riding him. Chakan found them. He had done a check of the house, making sure everybody had got into their beds safely and wasn't passed out somewhere, and finding the bedroom door locked, he had opened it with a spare set of keys. Mingyu had been beyond embarrassed. Minghao had just laughed, high on his drugs. 

"You come from somewhere like Russia, right?" Minghao asked, crawling off Mingyu's body to sit on the end of the bed, his legs loosely crossed. Chakan, completely un-fazed, nodded. "And, you know, like there's millions of people there?" Minghao laughed. "You can't tell me there's not one guy there who wants to screw another guy, or another woman that likes boobs, or a guy that likes sequins..." Minghao accidentally gave himself a case if the hiccups. "Where's Junnie?" He asked Chakan. 

"At present, it is half-nine and I've no idea where M. Wen is." Chakan responded. 

"Oh." Minghao said softly. He smiled up at Chakan. "No worries, then, lets go and find him." 

Mingyu had buried his head beneath the pillows as Minghao wandered off in the nuddy-pants with Chakan, whom nothing on earth must shock at all. 


	10. Romanticist Zeitgeist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeonghan and Joshua transform the Rolls Royce Phantom into a "Bonkmobile"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is essentially quite a British thing. Teenagers and twenty-somethings by vans and funeral headers and range rovers and old phantoms to transform into a "mattress on wheels". The "Bonkmobiles". And when you're a teenager especially - 16-17 - you don't have your own house or car usually (depends if you're Welsh) so, of course, you need another place to get naked. I love the concept of this. It's so dirty and cheap but so Manchester, you know what I mean *grinning*?

Joshua smoothed some of Jeonghan's hair back from his face. The morning sunlight, white and pure, came down through the tree canopies and illuminated Jeonghan's pretty face, his skin the same shade as latte coffee. Jeonghan smiled gently up at him. "It feels nice when you do that." Jeonghan told him.

"I pulled enough on it last night." Joshua kissed Jeonghan's forehead, and then his cheek. A brief imagery display of Jeonghan in-between his thighs flashed through his head. 

It turned out that the Rolls Royce Phantom was quite roomy. Well, roomy enough for two horny twenty-somethings, that was. Once you folded the seats down. They are parked inside the gateway of one if the farmers Jeonghan's Father and Uncle rented land to for his pig-farming. At that moment, Jeonghan and Joshua had the Phantom parked beneath the farmers front garden. The house was a quart. mile up the field. There had been no signs of life around the property. Except for them.

"Was I good enough?" Jeonghan asked Joshua, fingertips touching the man's shaven and smooth chest. Joshua kissed him. 

"You were amazing." Joshua said. "You blew my mind." 

"Are you sure?" Jeonghan questioned. Joshua moved away from him slightly. 

"Are you sure?" Joshua echoed faintly. "The thought of you and this happens -" he threw off he and Jeonghan's coats which they had over themselves as some sort if cover, especially as their skin cooled down and anyone could look through the windows. Jeonghan nearly pissed himself laughing at the sight of Joshua's cock, beginning to grow flushed and hard. 

"Trust me, love, that doesn't happen unless you're good." Joshua said. Jeonghan finally recovered. 

"Can I get on it?" He asked.

"Oh, God, yeah." Joshua nodded frankly.


	11. Expressionist Style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeonghan's Father and Uncle kick everyone out the house with expressionist style, Seungcheol arranges a hit with Jihoon, and Junhui's matchmaking skills aren't taken into favour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt so sick today *laughing* fuck, it was awful. K by Cigarettes After Sex is interesting; it's almost like jazz, but not quite? It's cool. Like Tanya Reynolds. She's definitely cool.

Jeonghan's Father and Uncle kicked everyone out of the house. Uncle fired a round of ammunition up into the air at the front of the manor house, and everyone linked arms with a slight bit of difficulty and waltzed out if the entrance hall and doors, singing "Livin' On A Prayer" by Non Jovi in Hangul.

Everyone was still well and truly pissed, even though they all swore blind that their blood-toxicity reading could attract no policemen attention whatsoever.

Yeah, right. 

Both men looked around the crowd. "Where's my son?" and "Where's my nephew?", remarks from both the Yoon men, were put to Junhui as he cane out of the house, in-between Mrs Hong and Sofia Chwe.

"No idea, guys, sorry!" Junhui replied.

"He wouldn't be anywhere with my son would he?" Mrs Hong piped up. 

Oh, for Gods sake, shut the fuck up, Mrs Hong! Junhui begged silently as the Yoon men's heads snapped to look at him sharply, and they followed him as they progressed along the driveway in the chain of singing and dancing and well-drunken people. Uncle calmly slipped two more bullets into the gun from his pocket. Junhui swallowed. 

Oh, fucking bollocks, shit, he thought. I'll kill you, you loud-mouthed bitch! He glanced at Mrs Hong, blissfully unaware of how she had just created world war three. 

-

BEFORE/DURING THE YOON'S KICK-OUT:

"We've got to kill him, there's no other way." Jihoon said to Seungcheol, who was holding a thick white handkerchief to his bloodied nose. It was a nervous condition. Jihoon had never been other than kind and merciful and serving to him. Seungcheol can't imagine himself ever doing anything that would make the younger man turn on him like a animal predator. 

"I'm not the one pulling the trigger." Seungcheol warned, but he didn't know why he had been foolish enough to say it. Jihoon was his hitman. His protector. The sound of Sofia Chwe and her English friends - Hitler's daughters, The Tudur heiresses - singing 5SOS songs floated up into Seungcheol's rooms from down the hall. Seungkwan and Vernon had stuck their heads into the rooms earlier to say morning. They all had a quick chat. 

"I do it." Jihoon shrugged simply.

"Don't you ever wonder if you'll ever go to hell?" Seungcheol asked Jihoon. Jihoon shook his head. 

"I'm not a bible-basher; so I've got nothing to worry about." Jihoon poured himself a cup of tea from the service tray that had been brought up by one of the male servants. He stirred a spoonful of sugar into it. He smiled at Seungcheol before he took his first sip of the drunk. "What? Ate you a convert now?" 

Seungcheol shook his head. He looked rather pale. Rather, he looked grey. Both he and Jihoon looked down at the ground as they heard a fight break out.

"I'LL KILL HIM!" 


	12. TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo and Soonyoung crash on into Jeonghan and Junhui in the Bonkmobile Rolls Royce Phantom with a round of it, and Junhui watches Mrs Hong and the Yoons head up World War Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, the inclusion of "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME". "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME" is a song by the 1975 from their 2018 album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. It's my second-favourite song. "Perfect Places" by Lorde from her 2017 album, MELODRAMA, comes first, but then "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME". I thought it would be sort of funny. And as this work is written as a bit of a dark comedy - oh, and another thing. Wonwoo and his families native Shamanism. I couldn't make them a pro-Christian family; I just couldn't, but I had to have one of those families in the book. So, yes, I picked the Jeons *laughing*. Anyway, so Wonwoo's appearance has been made quite shamanic, and, all cultures have a sort of trance, a bardoi. Including Hangul Shamanism.

"Shut up and let me do this, I might never get the chance to do it again." Wonwoo grinned at Soonyoung. 

"You're a Shaman, behave yourself." Soonyoung tried to tell Wonwoo off, but he grinned a split second later. Both of them had their eyes locked on the Rolls Royce Phantom currently bouncing up and down on it's suspension. Soonyoung thought the Shaman looked handsome that morning with his masses of very ling and thick black hair that hung in curtains either side of his face, going down below his knees to his feet. That day Wonwoo was wearing his glasses, and the prescription glass blunted in the morning opaline sunlight. Wonwoo jumped over the wooden gate fence of the farm and approached the car.

"You wet my eyes

But I don't mind it

I tell you lies

But it's only sometimes -" Soonyoung nearly collapsed onto his knees as Wonwoo sung, and danced like a techno-git.

"You pick a fight -" Soonyoung's mouth moved along to the words silently. 

"I swear that I, I swear that I -" 

"FUCK OFF, YOU FOUR-EYED FUCKING COCK-SUCKING FUCKING HEAP OF SHIT MORON!" Joshua howled. Wonwoo didn't lose his beat for a second.

"I only called her one time -" he swayed his hips to the side and mimicked a telephone by his ear before taking off in a sprint across the field as Joshua climbed stark naked out if the Phantom via the boot, and raced after Wonwoo, howling at how he was going to cut off his testicles and shove them down his throat. 

"Maybe it was two times

Don't think it was three times

Can't be more than four times -"

Soonyoung waved cheerfully at Jeonghan who knelt down in the back of the car, looking out around the side if the boot at his naked boyfriend chasing Jeon Wonwoo across a field, and then looking back at Soonyoung. Jeonghan cautiously waved back, and Soonyoung got back dancing like a complete dickhead to Wonwoo's music. 

"Think we need to rewind

You text that boy sometimes

Must ve more than three times

Didn't mean to too-time, oh too-time you!'

-

"I'LL KILL HIM!" Both Jeonghan's Uncle and Father roared over Joshua Hong. They promptly got into a colossal fight with Mrs Hong. Then Mrs Choi and Mr Kwon came and stuck their noses into it. Junhui nearly died. None of it was meant to go like this at all...at all.

Oh my God, Junhui thought to himself. 

The fight proceeded to go on for four hours, and in all of those four hours, nor a single person left the Yoon Estate. All if them stood agog, watching. The Tudur girls and Sofia Chwe took it in turns of been lifted up by Jaws into his shoulders so they could get a view of Mrs Hong doing her nut at the Yoon men, before Mrs Choi cane in as her back-up, swinging her handbag around. That in itself attracted "ooo's" from the watching crowd. Very 1960's move; if one had been an old lady in the 1960's. Mrs Choi at one point squarely smack Uncle Yoon around the head. This made a round of applause erupt into the air. 


	13. Native Faith Hanguls Hunt Catholics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua gives Soonyoung and Wonwoo a lift home, before running for his Catholic-christened life when he finds out that one of his passengers is a Native Hangul Shaman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the next few chapters I'll be writing quite a bit of Hangul Shamanism. Now, I'll sound very arrogant, but, trust me, I know what they do. Most peoples perceptions of Indigenous and otherwise Native rituals, faith, traditions and lifestyle comes from 18th-19th Century Christian/Christo-Society Romanticism, or it comes diluted and multilated from the hippies in the 50's and 60's and 70's who went to influence the sub-cultures of fantasy and the perception of Native/Indigenous in modern literature, filmmaking, societal perception, art, and to the view of minority cultures and religious like Hindu, Islam, Klan, etc, etc. Shamanism in Korea is very, very different to the Korean interpretation of Buhddism and Shinto. Most Shamanisms the globe over and notoriously vicious - the Indigenous Cymry, The Scandinavians, The Gael-Celts, The Norse, The Germanic Goth Tribes, etc. Shamanism in East Asia is no exception. Most of the shamanism I write came from Mongolian ethnic minorities 35,000 years ago, and that ancient race breeding and ethnic-evolution steadily became over the course if time, this. It will be fairly shocking

Joshua didn't want to give Wonwoo and Soonyoung a lift back to where Soonyoung's car was at the Yoon's, but Jeonghan sweetly convinced him into doing it, touching his neck and jaw and gazing at him with such a depth that it was curiously haunting - as though saying Joshua could be so easily left behind by it - that Soonyoung watched in a form of awe, and Wonwoo was approving. It completely radiated from Jeonghan's being, like magic. Twenty-five years before, Wonwoo's Father had blessed Jeonghan as a infant in a lake of a sacred sight, a native Hangul faith baptization. Wonwoo had often said of how it set them all apart; he watched at how Joshua let himself be held and cultivated by someone that he was taught was the antichrist. Wonwoo smiled. Funny how the world worked, was it not? 

Wonwoo was quite talkative in the back while Soonyoung looked out if the window up at the rural scenery as Joshua drove the Phantom along. "What have you been up to? I haven't properly talked to you for ages!" Jeonghan called to Wonwoo, looking at the man as he twisted around in his seat. 

Wonwoo smiled a little bit. "Delivered three babies last week." He said mildly. Joshua's eyes widened as he drove the vehicle along, and Jeonghan cheered. 

"Boys or girls?" He asked.

"All girls." Wonwoo grinned. "All nice-looking babies." 

"You're a Doctor?" Joshua asked, glancing up at Wonwoo in the revision mirror. 

"No, he's a Shaman." Jeonghan told Joshua, laughing. "In England and Europe I think they call them things like Ovates and Druids and Derwydd's?" 

Joshua nearly crashed the car. He pulled over sharply to the side of the road, and twisted around sharply to look at Joshua. Joshua was terrified at the heathen sight of the two thick red tattoo lines across the Adams apple in Wonwoo's throat, and the two red lines across his cheekbones and nose with a black line across the centre of his lower lip. He had two red limes tattooed on his lower eyelids, like thick red pencil kohl.

"You're not a Shaman, you're just a freak." Joshua snapped. Uneasiness grew powerfully inside him. Wonwoo smiled like predator on the hunt. 

"Run, baby." He fave Joshua the snake eyes, and his lips peeled back to show his purposely sharpened incisors. Jeonghan and Soonyoung's mouths fell open as Joshua sped from the car as though his life depended on it. Wonwoo reached over and carressed Jeonghan's scarred cheek thoughtfully. Soonyoung climbed into the drivers seat, and he felt euphoria course through his veins. He was getting to drive the Yoon's Rolls Royce Phantom! Not one of his Fathers German shitheaps, but a Rolls Royce Phantom! Jeonghan held Wonwoo's hand against his face. 

"I'm not sure if he'll ever talk to me again after this." Jeonghan confessed quietly. 

"Don't worry; you are cold. Men will come back for the gold. It's a commodity that they can't live without." Wonwoo told him. He instructed Soonyoung to drive. 

They didn't see hide nor hair of Joshua Hong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, there is a matter with the story as well. If you're wondering why there is no mention of matters like drug trade or sex trade - a good 50% of it isn't well. Most of the drug trading in the Anglo and Asian world's is down by underclass individuals who become immensely rich, but still act like the disease they are born of. Particularly in Asia, there is a huge and prevalent culture of blood purity, hierarchy, and old money. For example, rich in England is pittance to rich in China or Japan or Korea. And especially where there is old money involved, there comes reputation. It's a near tribalism, a psychopathy. It's a huge statement in Korea for a family to have maintained wealth during the Japanese invasions of World War Two. Because most families were ruined, or they maintained themselves by bending to Japanese Imperial rule, and coasiding with them. There is a level of disgrace that comes with that as well. In England, you see old families clash over if they supported the German and Austrian and Swedish movements; they can be the darkest secrets. It's a similar tome between Korea and Japan. If you're Japanese and you go into a shop in Korea, 95% of the time, they won't serve you. For every family or business that makes drugs, there's at least six powers observing and playing the game and supplying. And it's not impossible, the context of these very old bloodlines. My own Indigenous Cymry family went back before the 1062 invasion of William the Conquerer. Same in Asia. There is old blood, but there is old blood.


	14. Ritualistic Introspect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo takes Jeonghan down to a sacred sight to cleanse him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had quite a lot of fun to write this. I write a heap as far as notes went in the last chapter *laughing* it was virtually a anthropologically-religeous piece. What I'm trying to say is, I've got literally nothing to say. I'm a short thin in the armchair of my studio needing a cup of tea

Instead of going home, Soonyoung drove them down to one of the sacred native sights the Yoon's had included in their purchase if the Estate lands in the 1880's for the Jeon family, while they had known since the 1790's. Jeonghan pulled a bottle of Scots. Whiskey from the glovebox and he, Wonwoo and Soonyoung sculled it as they drive the Rolls Royce to the edge of the forest, and continued on foot. Wonwoo put Jeonghan over his shoulder like a possession. When they arrived, the rest of Wonwoo's people were there. The girls equally tattooed and knotted-haired swam around in petticoats and in the nude, while the men walked around in loose, peasant-style Hanbok. They all cheered out at they're Sham coming home. Wonwoo screamed out in a old tongue that Soonyoung and Jeonghan didn't understand. The trees were so thick around the cave entrance leading to the deepest parts of the spring-water lake that the sunlight didn't quite venture inside.

A chant began to be howled into the air. People whooped and cried and cheered. Jeonghan felt breathless and Soonyoung grinned openly, been smothered into the arms of numerous girls, having been friends with Wonwoo since they were five years old. 

People screamed in ritualistic highs as a bonfire was lit on the surface of the water. 

"What are we actually doing?" Jeonghan asked Wonwoo as the younger man carried him like a bride into the water. 

"Washing you clean of filthy Christian." Wonwoo replied conversationally. Jeonghan scoffed, rolling his eyes.

"What if I like him?" Jeonghan quipped, his arms around Wonwoo's neck. 

"The Gods won't be happy." Wonwoo tutted.

"What if I don't care what my Gods think?" 

"You should care what your Gods think, they care about you until you displease and disgrace them, and so to save you I cleanse you." The water was around their shoulders now. Wonwoo put Jeonghan into the water, and Jeonghan didn't fight as Wonwoo took off all if his clothes. Not that he had a great deal on anyway, due to Joshua. Just trousers and a shirt. One of the girls leant down from a rock ledge, supported by thick ropes of moon ivy wrapped around her body and up into her hair, drawn down from the cave ceiling. Have upside down, she painted Jeonghan's wet face - his nose, chin, cheekbones, lips, and forehead - with black paint in cubic shapes. 

Wonwoo held Jeonghan in his arms again, and, freeing one hand without dropping Jeonghan or having any difficulty holding his body, Wonwoo slipped his middle and index fingers into Jeonghan's mouth. Jeonghan's lips closed of them for a moment, tasting a bittersweet substance in his mouth and the smell of the black paint on his face - inescapable - making his head spin. Jeonghan's eyes closed and he tipped his head back, falling away from the Earth, as Wonwoo's hand slid down his naked body and the ritual begun.


	15. Blood and KGB

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junhui has his nose broken by Jeonghan's Father, and gets fixed up by Mrs Hong and Chakan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I once saw a Doctor in Somerset do this. Honestly, it was fucking hilarious *laughing* the poor woman - my boss, actually - looked like she had had a firecracker put up her bum-oley. Or, rather, a firecracker put up het booger-save, shall we say? 

Junhui helped as a fissile stent was put inside one of his nostrils to break up clotted blood. He gasped a breath afterwards; the sheer moment had been absolutely agonizing. Mrs Hong patted his hand, but a look of ravished fury was still on her face for what had been said of her son and who he choosed to love and be with. Junhui couldn't help but wonder - a bit fearful - of how Mr Hong was going to react when he found out. What was it going to be like with Mr Hong up against the Yoon men? But, hey, this was the man who stole £5,000,000 of World War Two aircraft from Papua New Guinea. It wasn't as though he didn't have a "inner cunt" as Junhui liked to phrase it. The Hongs were vastly clever; and vastly sly as well. 

"I'm sorry, M. Wen, but well need a second one." Chakan told him. Instead of being bought a proper Doctor or taken to a hospital after Jeonghan's Father had broken Junhui's nose, the maids had gone and found Chakan who had come back to the property, unable to find Jeonghan with Minghao. Chakan had taken off his shirt ans had given it to Minghao, who practically swam in the rich white cotton fabric. Chakan was left in his up-market leather shoes, trousers, vest, waistcoat and jacket. Junhui felt something cool pool in the out if his stomach when a thought came into his head; had Chakan been one if the KGB. Is that how he knew medical practitioning? Junhui really wasn't comfortable with the thought. 

He gripped Mrs Hong's hand very tightly as the second stick was inserted. Chakan took them out very carefully and slipped slim white cotton lengths into the inner dry panels of Junhui's nose. He put a hard plaster cover over the freshly re-set bone, and told Junhui that he would have to get used to mouth-breathing for the next few weeks.

"He shouldn't have hurt you." Mrs Hong said sharply, speaking of Jeonghan's Father. "You've made my child very happy, Junhui. God knows Jeonghan needs some company in his life, with his face the way it is." She invited Junhui and Minghao to come back to her and her husband's residence once they tracked down Joshua and Jeonghan - yes, for he would be coming too. 

Junhui wondered about the state of his club, But decided it would be okay. He accepted Mrs Hong's invitation, and he watched as she write out a check with beautiful hand-writing for Chakan for fixing Junhui's face. The Sebian man refused it at first, but he took it when Mrs Hong told him he was insulting her by refusing. Chakan folded the cheque and put it into the lining picket if his jacket. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the characters, they are bad characters. They are mental. I'm not trying to portray them ad good, but, rather, I'm showing them just as they still are - Mothers, Fathers, relations, businessmen of all degrees. There was a Russian solider during WWII who killed 1080 German Nazi shoulders before he retired to the Bondi coast in Sydney, Australia, and worked as a life-saver and teaching little children to swim. This is an example of human nature - how it turns and lives and evolves. It is really quite dumpy to understand, and it's very interesting, but it seems to baffle most people.


	16. The Pagan Art Of Rudeness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mrs Hong collects up Junhui, Minghao and Joshua to take them home, and does her nut at Wonwoo over his treatment of Jeonghan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final bit at the end with Wonwoo; that's actually a Germanic Goth Tribe trick rather than Indigenous Cymry, Gael Celt, Scandinavian, Slavic, etc, etc. The trick is to actually induce a nosebleed by scratching the inner panels of your nose, swallowed it down like you do accidentally if you have a headcold, and hold the blood in your mouth. I did this once *laughing* no, no, I'm kidding. I can think of a few people I'd like to freak out with it though (my ex for a start...)

Joshua got a phone call from his Mother just as he and Seungcheol - who looked like Death warmed up - looked for Jeonghan. Joshua explained that they had done a full circuit of the first quarter of the Yoon's Estate lands - privately owned and rented to farmer tenants - but they couldn't find hide nor hair of him. Joshua explained that Jeonghan had disappeared off with the Kwon's eldest boy, Soonyoung, and the Jeon's eldest, Wonwoo. His Mother wasn't quite so happy at the mention of Wonwoo. She abruptly told him to stay as far away from "that family", as possible and that she'd organize something. Nearly everyone was at least a three hundred meters distance away from the Yoon's front and back doors, but the men were tetchy and had their fingers on gun triggers. They wanted every non-relation gone.

-

Jeonghan woke up the sound of people humming and singing in old Hangul language. He was lying naked...in what seemed to be a garden bed, but a garden bed of young clematis blooms.

"Better take you home." Wonwoo told Jeonghan, wrapping the other man up in his arms and sitting him up. Soonyoung had just gotten a phone call from Mrs Hong and his own Mother. Both had hit the roof over whatever heathen practices it was that Wonwoo had inflicted on Jeonghan. Mrs Hong didn't want Jeonghan anywhere near his Father or Uncle, who would certainly beat him to within an inch of his life. Wonwoo scoeled darkly at the idea of one if his own blessed going into a - lets say, "Catholic household". 

"Sorry, Woo, bit it's what's got to happen." Soonyoung told Wonwoo as Wonwoo dressed the half-conscious Jeonghan in a peasant-style Hanbok and carried him up from the sacred sight to the main road where the Phantom was parked. They took him two miles down the toad where the Hong's, Junhui and Minghao were waiting in their Range Rover. 

Mrs Hong flew off the handle - again - when her eyes laid sight on Jeonghan. "Why on earth is he wearing a dress?!" She screeched as Joshua dived out if the car and took his boyfriend into his arms while his Mother howled her lungs empty at a statuesque and slow-blinking Wonwoo and a shrinking Soonyoung. "In God's name, you are maniacs!" 

Mrs Hong screamed in utter fear as Wonwoo opened his mouth and thickened blood ran like a fiver from his mouth, and splashed down onto the worn and pot-holed bitumen below. Wonwoo grinned, and waved his hand cheerily as they drove off, his lips and teeth and tongue and chin stained red. Soonyoung looked at him.

"That was really rude, you know." Soonyoung opined. Wonwoo shrugged.

"Yes, bit it's very fun." He answered.


	17. Red Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jihoon takes out a hit, and we see the introduction of his girlfriend Elisabeth Traeovsky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically, Elisabeth Traeovsky is Tanya Reynolds. I love her as a actress, and especially when she was in a British TV series called, "Delicious", where she played a character called Teresa Benelli. Sorry, correction, Elisabeth Traeovsky is basically Teresa Benelli. Makeup, everything, I love it. The sort of damaged effect...it's so tragic and human.

You must be heartless, Seungcheol's words echoed over in Jihoon's skull as he calmly slipped the magazine to the gun that he had bought the previous night from M. Kiel - Jaws. Jihoon didn't mind anything in the world as he spun the silencer onto the til of the gun, and made sure it worked by firing a testing shot at the trunk of a towering Elm tree. It worked perfectly. Jihoon took a swiss-army knife from the pocket of his jeans and dug the bullet out of the tree. Of the barely anything he regretted in his life, it was suddenly for the tree. Though he wouldn't, if Wonwoo ever found out that Jihoon had shot a tree for no reason, Wonwoo would beat the seven shades of shit out of him. 

Jihoon climbed into the purple Vauxhall '92-model wagon and made his way to the Seoul city address. His girlfriend Elisabeth sat in the passenger seat. 

"Are you okay?" She asked in English, her Korean still being learnt. Jihoon nodded stiffly. "Ok." She said softly. Elisabeth was tall and skeletally thin but was very beautiful. Most people said she had a very strange face, coming from Slavic and Anglo-Francais English descent. Her absurd but pretty thinness was like a Tim Burton character, her Slavic height, her lathe nose, and very thin mouth. Her face was otherwise fine-boned and thin, nothing outstanding like the thick-boned and gracious and duck-lipped women Russia represented to the world. Her eyes were large and dark with heavy lids, like a portrait from the 15th Century. Jihoon knew Elisabeth somtimes felt insecure about the way she looked. Jihoon wasn't quite sure if he loved her, but he liked having her around. She was like him. That was it, so purely and simply.

Elisabeth Traeovsky was like him. 

She waited in the passenger seat of the Vauxhall, black skinny jeans, and a black voile peasant blouse with a black silk petticoat beneath, tucked away into her jeans. Red lipstick, smudged but beautifully nostalgic black eye-makeup. It made Jihoon think back to the late 1990's-2000's. He kissed her before he went inside. 

Jihoon had premeditated the kill over the course of a week. A bottle of wine with a wax-top delivered to the address from his friends winery. Jihoon had injected a sedative into the bottle of wine before sealing the wax top over again, using a cigarette lighter to re-melt the wax. The man to die, it was his seventy-fifth birthday on Wednesday; that day. His birthday, Christmas, and Mid-Summer were the only times he ever drank. He was famous for his otherwise sobreity. Jihoon picked the front door and calmly walked inside. The old man slept in his armchair in his sitting room, a fide blazing away in the hearth. A cigarette had come out of the man's mouth and was now singing a hole into the man's cardigan. He would feel nothing. Jihoon shot the man threw his head over the top of his armchair, and closed his eyes to avoid seeing the red and grey splatter of the inside of the man's head. Even with small bullets, there was always a slight amount of..."residue". Jihoon simply left afterwards. 

Elisabeth was playing a Sam Smith CD when he got back to the car. "Dawn doesn't want to see me anymore." Elisabeth hugged her knees to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. She looked sightlessly at the pillar between the passenger window and the front windscreen. Dawn was a girl from England who Elisabeth had been in a relationship with when she wasn't with Jihoon. 

Jihoon didn't ask any questions. He pushed some if Elisabeth's dark brown hair behind her ear, and touching the top of het cheekbone before driving the Vauxhall away from the curb.

He'd go and get her a bottle of wine.


	18. Self Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeonghan is delirious and feverish in the back seat of the Hong's Range Rover, Jaws floors Chan, and Jeonghan's Father regards him ad Lord Of The Gays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've really no idea what to put. Potential edit for this bit here

"Oh, God, what did they do to you?" Joshua asked Jeonghan as he laid across he, Minghao, and Junhui's laps in the backseat. With the luggage in the boot, car and front passenger seat, there was no room. Jeonghan giggled softly.

"I had the most amazing time." His eyes opened to half-lids, gazing up at Joshua with such a ethereality that Joshua's next words dies in his head and chest and throat before they came to the air around them. Minghao looked at the two men for a moment ans forced down something else in his head, writing a song instead internally. Amy Winehouse worked her way into his head instead. Bugger off you, you've been dead for years, Minghao told her sternly.

"Are you sure?" Joshua asked weakly. Jeonghan hummed, nodding.

"The water was so nice and warm..." 

"Water?" Joshua echoed. Junhui and Minghao looked at each other as Mrs Hong looked at them all in the revision mirror. They wisely kept their mouths shut. Mrs Hong at the moment was akin to a little ducked off shetland pony. And she had already gone fucking bananas right times that day. It couldn't be good fir her blood pressure and other nervous system.

"Yeah, Shus, the lake in the cave..." 

"That boy needs to see a Doctor." Mrs Hong said. Minghao jumped in.

"No, it's a old native sight." He told her truthfully. "Jeonghan's not dreaming; it's real. It's where all the Jeons do there -" 

"Minghao, will you shut the buck up?" Junhui snapped, checking Jeonghan's pulsebeat at the side if his neck. Jeonghan's skin was hot and damp with sweat, and his heart was beating very fast. Jeonghan asked Mrs Hong if she could put on the cars heater; he was cold.

Oh, shit, Junhui thought. Jeonghan really did need a doctor.

-

"I'm going to miss you." Chan laughed, hugging the man he knew affectionately as "Uncle Jaws". Jaws had nearly had to bend half over to reach Chan, so Chan let Jaws pick him up.

"I'm always around." Jaws told him. His metal fillings clicked together as he smiled. He out Chan down. "I'm coming down for your 21st as well." 

Chan high-gives him, and Jaws accidentally knocked him over onto the bonnet of his car. Chan had come to the Yoons separately from his parents in his Porsche 911. Jaws groaned regretfully, and picked up his friends son off the ground. "You and Dad are so not organizing it." Chan wheezed, getting into his car and putting the drivers window down. Jaws laughed.

"Yes, we are." He said. 

-

"I can't believe my son is now Lord of the Gays." Jeonghan's Father mumbled to himself in his sleep as he rolled over onto his side on the settee in the library. The two maids who had been dusting the shelves and collecting the smoked cigar and cigarette butts from the crystal tray on the writing desk in the room had to run from the space as they nearly passed our from contained laughter.


	19. The Reasons Of Hawthorn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo has really made Jeonghan quite ill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Earlier in the book, there was a scene where Wonwoo slipped his fingers inside Jeonghan's mouth, and he noticed a bittersweet taste that got sweeter.  
> What that is is Hawthorn. Hawthorn is basically the sex drug; it doesn't cause lethargy or lack of consciousness...unless mixed with the penicillin compound of paracetamol, nurofen, panadol, etc, etc  
> Hawthorn induced increased blood flow to the brain, heart, and sexual regions; this creates, of course, erections in men, and tightness and a sense of heat in a wkmans abdominal regions and other nervous system. It doesn't induce a high like a drug, bit when your sex organs are effected, it does indyc the sex hormone

Minghao strummed a drum in a Spanish delegata style, lying on a chaise-lounge in the rooms where ill Jeonghan had been put. It wasn't bright outside anymore, and the only light on the bedroom were two lamps; one of them was on one of Jeonghan's bedside tables, and the other on-top of his tall-boy wardrobe. Joshua lay down on the bed beside Jeonghan. Jeonghan was cuddled into Joshua's side, a cold flannel on his head and the blankets not allowed to be put into him. 

"Where did you learn to do that?" Joshua asked Minghao, his head tipping to the side to face Minghao. Minghao had his legs up on the arm of the chaise-lounge, crossed neatly at the ankle. He raised an eyebrow. 

"I once dated someone from Spain." Minghao replied, soft-toned. He looked at Joshua's guitar in his hands. He played a few more cords. "Insane and passionate." He didn't say anymore. He played the guitar. Joshua's eyes slipped closed, basking the in the psychotic and sensual and jump-start. Jeonghan whined in his sleep, murmuring something in the old Henrik tongue that Minghao recognized as Wonwoo's speech to his own kind of people. He averted his eyes back to the sharp strings.

"What's he saying?" Minghao said, deciding to tread a very, very fine line. 

"I've no idea; what language is it?" Joshua moved, sitting up ans holding Jeonghan's limp body in his arms. Minghao put the guitar to the ground. He was going to ask Wonwoo why Jeonghan was murmuring about death spirits. He left the rooms and walked down to the end if the hall. He looked through a un-curtained window to the outside. The sky was heavily over-cast. It looked like it was to rain. 

Minghao called him. "Wonwoo, I'm not greatly impressed as you might imagine." Minghao told him. Wonwoo wasn't too disturbed.

"He should not be in that sub-human house." Wonwoo replied. 

Minghao rolled his eyes. "You can't say someone is sub-human because they're Catholic, Wonwoo." He said. 

"Funny how they do a lot of sub-human things, then." Wonwoo remarked silkily. Minghao groaned.

"Alright, alright." He said. "What did you do to Jeonghan, now, he's sick - got a fever and he's not conscious properly and he's talking about spirits under his breath. Talking in his sleep." 

Wonwoo didn't reply for a few moments. "Just leave him be. The Gods don't like the Catholicism. Don't give him any medication whatsoever. No paracetamol, nothing." 

"He's been given about twelve different versions of that by the Hong family doctor." Minghao said.

Wonwoo pauses. "Oh, shit." He commented mildly. He hung up the line. Minghao looked at his phone. 

What did he mean by, "Oh, shit."

"The drink you spilt all over me..." Jeonghan mumbled against Joshua's chest. Joshua blinked, before smiling a little bit.

"Yeah, sorry about that." The first time he had ever met Jeonghan at Junhui's club, he had been doing an impression of something, and had knocked a glass of whiskey all over Jeonghan's crotch. Jeonghan had commented his trousers now had a great risk if a £150 fine in the mail. Joshua had laughed.

"That was a nice night..." Jeonghan dropped back out of it

"Yeah, that was a nice night." Joshua whispered.


	20. Fade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seungcheol's Grandfather tries to set him right, not wanting his Grandson to fade away as he continues to be plagued by immunity illness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not really sure what to say. Give me a couple of minutes. I'll think of something.

Seungcheol threw his guts up into a toilet until there was nothing in him but he was still dry-fetching. He forced himself to drink some water so that if his body still wanted to hurl, he wasn't damage himself internally by retching dry. Seungcheol wasn't really sure if he knew how to feel about it. But it wasn't as though he could do anything about it.

It's not much of a life you're living, a voice murmured in the back of Seungcheol's head. And you should have dated Jeonghan when you had the chance

Seungcheol rubbed at his eyes, exhausted. Jihoon had given him the phone call. The man had been killed. Seungcheol's Grandfather waited in the sitting room. After twenty minutes, Seungcheol staggered out to see the old man. He was ashamed of how he stunk if vomit, but he just couldn't help it. His Grandfather's eyes fell on his grey skin and lank hair and his foul breath as Seungcheol sat as far away from him as possible, in a armchair far across the coffee table.

"Why do you keep being sick?" Grandfather asked him. Seungcheol shrugged shallowly. Grandfather wasn't impressed with his answer. 

"Are you getting dependant on something?" 

Seungcheol nearly laughed. Drugs and alcohol? No, not at all. Not his thing whatsoever. He told his Grandfather this. 

"I don't want you fading away." His Grandfather opined sternly. He asked Seungcheol if Mrs Li - Jihoon's Mother - was at the family residence or was she in Australia where they owned property.

"No, she's home at the moment." Grandfather gave s gruff response in response to Seungcheol's information. Seungcheol asked if he was alright to get up by himself. Grandfather nodded.

"I want you to come our with me." The old man said. He got his walking cane and got to his feet. "After you have a bath, son. Go on, I'm right here."

Afterwards, Grandfather took Seungcheol out to a place that Seungcheol didn't recognize. He found himself nervous until he saw Boo Seungkwan sitting at the bar with Li Seokmin. 

"Don't usually see your age in here." Seungkwan commented to Seungcheol's Grandfather. The old man humphed. Seungkwan wasn't actually intending to be offensive. Grandfather recognized it.

It took Seungcheol a few minutes to realize what his Grandfather was doing. This wasn't business related. This was just the old man trying to look after him. 

Seungcheol felt sick inside. He couldn't help but imagine Jeonghan with Joshua Hong.


	21. Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo's medicine takes ahold of Jeonghan, Seungcheol's night goes very badly, Wonwoo waits on Mingyu, and Jihoon spends some time with Seungcheol, desperately wanting to fall in love with Elisabeth Traeovsky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite a big chapter this. Well, I suppose it is. Every ten seconds I'm racing out to the kitchen, making sure the chicken in the oven isn't on fire :))  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy the myriad if all intertwined

Joshua gasped a breath, trying to breathe with Jeonghan's mouth on his, kissing him harshly.

"Jeonghan -"

"No, don't you dare refuse me." Jeonghan's curved up either side of Joshua's neck.

"I'm not, I can't breathe -" Joshua gave a guttural moan as Jeonghan choked him before he slid down Joshua's body and bit his neck harshly. Joshua yelped and tried to pull away from Jeonghan, but he couldn't. He was never like this. It had to be whatever those heathen Jeons had done to him. Some sort of drug they had put him on.

Downstairs, Minghao and Junhui didn't hear a thing as they danced to "Fox On The Run" by '70s Australian rock band SWEET with a couple of very cute domestic servants.

-

Seokmin and Seungkwan had got Seungcheol very, very drunk. Seungcheol temporarily forgot about Jeonghan. Seungcheol nearly dropped his phone as he got a text from Jihoon. He asked if he could stay over-night at Seungcheol's. Seungcheol had to get Seokmin to type in the agreeing response. Seungcheol's hands trembled for some reason. A few moments later as he stood up from the bar for some reason, for no reason at all he hissed "Cunt", and then threw up all over himself and his shoes.

-

Wonwoo waited outside all night in the pitch-black darkness, watching the upper-floor bedroom windows of Mingyu's house, waiting for him all of that time. He didn't feel the cold, but what he did feel was the elastical boredom and depisition of Mingyu, keeping his and their time strung out like this. And it hasn't even begun yet. And how were they supposed to even begin in the first place if Mingyu wasn't even there? 

-

Jihoon thought that Seungcheol had a very comfortable bed. For the second time that evening, Seungcheol was soaking and washing the smell of vomit now tainted with masses if disgusting regurgitated alcohol from his skin and mouth. Two years. Two years ago was when Seungcheol had started to become like that. He trembled and went various shades of pale green, grey and white. Sometimes he passed out, and, othertimes, he couldn't eat anything. About a month after, the vomiting started. Seungcheol had lost about twenty-two pounds, and was constantly tired. Exhausted shadows staining his skin beneath dead eyes. His lips were colourless. He constantly looked like death warmed up. Jihoon thought he felt cold to the touch, the very scarce times in the last two years that he had touched Seungcheol; a handshake, a fist-bump, running into him in the hallway, helping him up from the floor when he had shivered breathlessly and had fainted, falling down, a dead weight. No one said anything. No one did anything. Jihoon helped Seungcheol get on a pair of pyjama bottoms and a vest. He knew Seungcheol was deeply ashamed and humiliated, but Jihoon didn't want him to be. He was already like that from Elisabeth earlier, who had needed taking care of, too. He told Seungcheol about Elisabeth. Seungcheol pulled Jihoon down onto the bed for a chaste hug, but Jihoon held onto him for a very long time.

At that moment, Li Jihoon desperately needed a hug, too.

They ended up lying beside each other and smoking for a few minutes afterwards. Jihoon blew a smoke ring, and then Seungcheol topped it by blowing a smoke heart by hooking the tip of his index finger by his upper lip, distorting the smoke rings top curve. 

"Talented bastard." Jihoon told him. That sort of summed up Seungcheol and his body and his health at the moment. Things like cigarette love hearts, black coffee, green tea, vomiting, weight-loss, serotonin loss, no Doctor's appointments, not really living. Killing everything away.

Jihoon desperately wanted to fall in love with Elisabeth Traeovsky.


	22. Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minghao makes a confession to Junhui concerning Joshua Hong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seemed to take so long to type this one up.

Junhui and Minghao finally got back to the Jazz club the next day. 

"Ever get that feeling that anything and everything we do just really, really fucking sucks arse?" Minghao opined, wheeling a suitcase across the club's floor, pushing his Lennon glasses down his nose and surveying everything around him. It appeared that no one had broken in and defecated somewhere, anywhere. That went on around here. Junhui had nearly erupted all his internal organs from laughter when Joshua Hong told them his Father had done that to their next door neighbour who had blared Lady Gaga until three in the morning. 

Minghao chuckled at the memory. He had got beneath the table afterwards and had sucked Joshua off, while Joshua still tried to have a drink and chat with Junhui. Minghao remembered hearing Joshua's glass of alcohol shake as he set it down on the wood surface, and Junhui's soft laughter as Joshua's face flushed, trying not to make a sound of crack Minghao's skull open between twitching knee caps, fighting to shut in on the man in-between them because Joshua was currently having sex in front of his friend...done to him by another of his friends.

Junhui said later on in Vernon and Sofia Chwe ever made a film about them, they needed to have that scene in the film. After Joshua had gone, Minghao had grinned lazily and drunkenly, his hand slipping down the front of Junhui's jeans as they lay dizzy and tired on the empty stage, the clock just having ticked over to four 'o' clock in the morning. 

"Yeah." Junhui inhaled a breath through his mouth shallowly. He had a splitting headache from his broken nose. He didn't know how he was going to go that evening when Minghao's band turned up with their saxophones and trumpets and drums and cellos, the grand piano been played, thumping key notes. The thought itself made Junhui nervous, a sick pool at the bottom of his stomach. 

"Junnie?" Minghao asked. He sat on the edge of the stage, his kegs crossed and his hands gripping the edge of the stage.

"Yeah?" Junhui checked the wine list and made sure they still had enough of everything, Ir whether he needed to call Jihoon's winery friends and get them to make a delivery.

"What would you say if I was getting married?" Minghao questioned. Junhui looked up at him sharply. Minghao looked ethereal sitting on the edge of the stage. When he had first grown out that mullet, Junhui had insisted Jazz singers - especially the beautiful, sensual ones like Minghao - did not have bloody mullets. Where had they even come from? Australia in the seventies? 

"You're what?" Tore hollowly from Junhui's throat.

Minghao breathed in and out softly. "I don't." He replied simply. "I've just been thinking about Chrysanthe lately."

Junhui sighed through his nose, gazing across the bar and the club's floor to Minghao sitting in the stage. He put the wine-list down on the table, and put the tea-towel he had been using to shine the taps over his shoulder. "Why haven't you told me?" Junhui asked. He walked over the where Minghao was and sat in a chair directly opposite him from a close set table. Minghao averted his gaze, his thin shoulders moving slightly in a shrug. Junhui shifted in his chair

"You know you can tell me if you want." Junhui said.

"Yeah, I know, but I just can't sometimes, love." Minghao looked at Junhui. "I was thinking recently too, before you got Josh to meet Hannie..." He averted his gaze again, quiet shame seeping into his voice which hesitated with a pause. "Imagine if it had been me..." It took Minghao a very long time to say the other three words, and, even then, they were barely perceptible. "Me with Joshua." 

Junhui realized something he might just never have seen before. Was it truly possible that Minghao could have been - and all of this time, could he have actually been - 

Junhui fell deaf. As though someone flicked a switch. But he was wrong in that decision of emotion. Minghao's time was the clearest and most real thing of the Earth - of all it had ever given in functioning life - to Junhui right in that moment. "I'm not in love with him, but, you know -" Minghao chuckled softly, self-depreciatingly. "Depends on the day, the weather...my weather's." He looked up to the ceiling. "Sometimes I am in love with him, not just loving him. I dream about him. It was horrific, but that was long ago. I was obsessed with him. I dreamt about him every night I went to sleep. Saw him even when he wasn't there." Minghao hung his head. "God, I'm a retarded cunt." He said softly to himself.

"No, you're not." Junhui jumped in automatically, assuring Minghao. Not because if his utmost sincerity, but because that was what needed to be said, what he needed to say, say for Minghao. Minghao needed to hear that. Junhui was floored at the mere fucking realization that Minghao had been deeply in love with Joshua for all of this time - Junhui wanted to do a number of things, the first of which concerned Wonwoo and a serious whopping amount of native Hangul heathenry - but he had this to do now. Minghao had to sing that night with the band. They needed the clients back, the customers back. Their staff needed work. The whole business needed to run again after their little break.

Junhui thought back to how Minghao was fucking Mingyu at the Yoon's house. Was he closing his eyes and thinking Mingyu was Joshua? Junhui closed his own eyes, and rubbed his hands over his face. Fucking hell, he thought. He went still as Minghao's hands touched his head, holding it even though it was ducked and Junhui's face was covered; Minghao's lips pressed into a gentle kiss on his head.

"Thank you, Jun." Minghao whispered, he left.


	23. Kill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jihoon fails a hit job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This chapter would have been published yesterday, but I was tired. You wouldn't believe how tiring knitting can be. When I was in my very early teens, I started to do dressmaking, and, at the moment, I can still sort of do that. But, as it's Winter coming, every client wants scarves and gloves and hats and jumpers...here we go, eh? *laughing*   
> Here chapter 23

Junhui's heart broke a little bit as he watched Minghao sing the last song of the evening. They were closing up earlier that evening because Marya had said that there were men hanging outside the front door. They had to give a normal evening to their clients and other customers; give the imagery, but, they had to end it earlier to deal with something else. They had a small choir - three girls and the rest of the band vocalizing with them - a soft and human and said "Oh" sound. Minghao closed his eyes and the head of the microphone touched his cheekbone, his hands around it, as he swayed gently to the sound along with everyone else in the club. The sound of the piano in the background and the soft crash of tinny-sounding drums caught Junhui up as though he was in a dream. The last song of the night was a blue Jazz song; now a yellow one.

"Will you call me to tell me you're alright because I worry about you..." Minghao sung gently. Junhui had to lean on his elbows against the bar with his hands clenched together and his head ducked as he nearly went to his knees on the floor, his child-fist of a heart beating dilly and chokingly in his throat.

-

What are you doing? Jihoon thought, pulling up just down the road from Junhui's club, looking at two men in industrial looking clothes - worst costume disguise ever, Jihoon opined, they must have watched Underbelly and got the wrong perspective of this realism - hanging outside the glittering Americano 1930's entrance to Junhui's club. Jihoon wound down the window of his black Mazda CX-9, and pondered the continued existence of the men - if that was to be allowed to them. He texted Junhui, keeping down low.

"They're not any of mine. Not any of the others." Junhui replied. "And if the Jeon's had a bone to pick - this isn't their style. Shoot them. I'll have a cheque inside, waiting for you." 

Jihoon rolled his eyes. Junhui didn't have to pay him, and the man knew that. But he still did it anyway. Jihoon put his window down further, stuck his gun with it's silencer fixed to the head of the weapon out of it, and cleaning took out the dal men not by shooting them, but by tranquilizing them. Jihoon made sure to call M. Tudur - Hitler - and M. Hong later on and thank them for running the errands for him. Unbeknownst to Joshua, Jihoon's gun was a re-modeled English hand-cannon that had belonged to a field marshal from the First World War, and if anyone could get their hands on a naturalistic sedative that could be derived from a common garden snake, it was Hitler.

Jihoon lit a cigarette, and stuck it between his lips. He puffed on it without dropping it as he handled the two men into a position that made them look like sleeping transients, huddling for warmth. Jihoon dragged them into a puddle in the gutter, and dirtier their shirts and jackets and jeans. He sighed through his nose, and exhaled a lungful of cigarette smoke in the process. Jihoon took the tiny needles out of their necks and temples, and planned to throw them into the storm water drain. It would be a peaceful death, really. As they slept now, before him, their systems shut down. Jihoon read the two sleeping men. His chest tightened involuntary at the olden one. "Why fucking do thus when you have kids?" He asked them in a mutter as he took out their wallets. The wallet if the older man had a photograph of twin babies, chubby and bald and drooling happily as they smiled at Daddy with his camera poised. Jihoon dis everything he promised to never do in his life. It was a betrayal to Junhui. Jihoon knew he should never have looked in the man's water. Jihoon went back to his car and took out another needle. He stuck it in the man's neck, and as he drove away, he saw the adrenaline flooding through the man's body, leaving him to have a seizure if renewed blood flow to his organs on the ground against his dead partner.

You shouldn't have done it. The photos were probably fake. You're a freak, a voice in the back of Jihoon's head murmured. As he drove in the freeway out of the city and approached a underpass bridge with thick concrete columns, Jihoon suddenly and bitterly wanted nothing more than to drive into one of them and end it all.


	24. Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo and Mingyu talk about sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm going to have to make this work more than 60 chapters long....

"Don't go." Mingyu said to Wonwoo. "Stay." He moved his fingers through Wonwoo's long and very thick black hair before touching Wonwoo's cheekbones. 

"I have to, now." Wonwoo replied. Mingyu pulled Wonwoo closer to his body, the both of them naked, lying in a field, the grasses long enough so that no one could see them unless they were to have an aerial view. Mingyu felt quite right with Wonwoo's head on his chest.

"Can I ask you something?" Mingyu asked, one of his large hands spanning over Wonwoo's back, his skin dark with the odd black mole, as small as a freckle, a French woman's beauty spot. "Why do you never make any sound when we...you know, do it?" 

"Just how it is." Wonwoo replied, without looking up at Mingyu. "When I was first having sex and learning to have it...it's just how it developed." 

"I never know if I'm any good or not." Mingyu confessed quietly, nearly laughing.

"It doesn't really feel natural if I try." Wonwoo said. Mingyu understood that. But there was another thing. He told Wonwoo how he always had this closed-eyed look on his face, sort if serene but just sort of still, like when he heard one of the women incanting, communicating from another section of one if their sacred sights. Wonwoo looked up at Mingyu then, one aide of his mouth lifted faintly. Wonwoo moved up over Mingyu's body and bit the top of his ear, before climbing off of him and walking away back across the field to the forest. Mingyu scrambled up, leaning onto his elbows and watching Wonwoo's naked body walking away, vieled by his masses of long black hair that went to his feet. Mingyu pulled on his own clothes and was left there. After the initial sight of Wonwoo, he was completely gone. Mingyu shivered and ran back the mile and a half to his house. Wonwoo had perfected the talent of being able to wreck him within only a few seconds.


	25. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeonghan tells Joshua he's in love with him

Joshua didn't see Jeonghan for a week. Jeonghan flew under the radar, and a fiery fury burned under Joshua's skin at the thought if the way Jeonghan's Father and Uncle were carrying on, and, how, because of that, Jeonghan was camping out with the heathens, the Jeons. 

Joshua looked in the direction of his front door as someone knocked on it. He hesitated, considering taking the gun that had been one his Father had given him from the writing desk beneath the window-sill in the sitting room. He didn't. When Joshua opened the door, he was greeted with the sight of Jeonghan on his front door-step, wrapped up in a huge and thick black coat with his hair in a bun at the back of his head. 

"Can I come in?" Jeonghan asked. Joshua nodded. They sat in silence for a long time in Joshua's sitting room.

"I've really missed you." Jeonghan eventually was able to say to Joshua. Joshua looked at him.

"I've missed you, too." Joshua admitted after several long moments, wondering whether where this was going to take him.

Joshua remembered the drilling that Vernon and Sofia Chwe had put into him. Say this, say that, this is how he feels, this is what he thinks of you - stick to the script we tell you, and it'll be right. Jeonghan rubbed the back of his neck, waiting for Joshua to do something, anything.

"What does your family think?" Joshua asked. Jeonghan's stomach twisted violently.

"Dad thinks your Dad is a cunt -" 

"Yeah, I agree wit that, so is that why he's having a go at you? He doesn't like it's me?"

"He thinks you're just another aids-tucker that's going to turn me into a cunt. How I do things is ducked apparently." Jeonghan ripped his hair loose from it's bun in horrible and ashamed and sinking anger, before pushing it back behind his ears. Joshua watched Jeonghan's hands move. Joshua thought in the beginning it would have been months and months and months before he would be able to be close to Jeonghan; kiss him, touch him. But Jeonghan embraced him like the Winter's sea, cold and shocking but all encompassing.

"What do you want from me?" Joshua asked.

Jeonghan thought slowly and carefully. "Now that I've been able to be with you - spend time with you, be in love with you - I don't want to be without you." 

Joshua blinked. "You're in love with me?" He echoed. Jeonghan watched him.

"It feels like it." Jeonghan told him softly.


	26. Abduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vernon and Seungkwan kidnap a Englishman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I need more pagan songs on my laptop. My sister showed me a whole KPOP album - (G) I-dle - earlier, and though it was cool, Goddess, my soul and my mental health is shaken. I need pagan music *grinning* calm me down. Oof!

"I'll have that cunt killed." Vernon glared down from the rooftop bar to the street below to the sight of a David Holcroft below. The Hong's - well, mainly M. Hong - had had run-in's with Holcroft in the past. It had been very, very nasty. Seungkwan giggled.

"You sound like Hitler." Seungkwan spoke of M. Tudur. "I can't believe how much damage you and your sister can do by a bit of typing." 

"Keep your fucking voice down." Vernon growled lowly. He spat from the rooftop and it missed the Englishman by only a few inches. Vernon swore.

"You could make money out of him." He added, messing up his hair as he ran a hand brutally through it.

"How?" Seungkwan asked.

"Abduct him and send him around to M. and Mrs Hong's. They'd give £10,000 to flog the shit out of the British cunt." Vernon rubbed his hands together in sharp temper.

Seungkwan grinned. "You're so sexy when you get cross." Seungkwan told him. Vernon thumped him.

"I've got some chains in the back of the car." Seungkwan offered. Vernon looked at him, his eyes intensely bright and alive. He seized Seungkwan's body to him by his hands on Seungkwan's head and gave him a huge, chaste and gleeful kiss on the mouth.

"You're a fuckin' legend, Kwannie!" Vernon shouted before he tore off across the roof-top bar to get a elevator ride down to the ground floor and out to Seungkwan's car which Vernon had a key that could unlock 65% of the worlds locks. Thanking Hitler very much for that.

It was a twenty minute wait. Vernon neatly wrapped the thick-bodied chain around David Holcroft's neck as he went to go into the gents. bathrooms. Vernon wrapped up his hands, mouth, and legs before dragging him out to the back of the apartments. He opened the boot of Seungkwan's car and put the Brit. inside. "Sucked in, you mother-fucking cunt." Vernon told the shaking man before he closed the boot lid. "Trying to get me and Sofe investigated by the Federal Police because you didn't like how we said correctly you like to stock up on child pornography?" 

Blood poured out from Holcroft's mouth. Some of his teeth were damaged. The middle-aged man's eyes were wet. He was curled up into a ball like a foetus, the boot too small for the talk man. Vernon slammed the boot lid shut. Now he could suffocate.

Seungkwan laughed in the passenger seat if the car, taking second-spot as Vernon drove. "What song would he hate the most but something we can stand?" Seungkwan asked.

Vernon thought. "Anything by Melanie Martinez." He decided.

"Saying it's my fault, it's my fault, because I put icing on top

Now all the boys want a taste of the strawberry shortcake." Vernon and Seungkwan nearly pissed themselves laughing, taking a joy out if the music, as David Holcroft tried to kick himself out if the boot and the music was blared far too loudly. 


	27. Bullets For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jihoon at Junhui's request gives Minghao a shooting lesson, and Elisabeth's eating problems rear a ugly head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please to report that o have recovered from yesterdays KPOP bash, but it took eight hours once awake and working to even look at a (G) I-dle song. Goodness me, Shuhua is attractive (yes, yes, just very slight lezzie-ness here). And when the crane swing goes past her in the SENORITA MV - quite the perfect shot, I must say

"Line it up." Jihoon smoked while Minghao lifted one of the hunting rifles of Jihoon's to shoulder height, and didn't blink as he fired it at a target. Minghao came just two inches outside the bulls-eye. Jihoon told him that was alright; pretty alright. Junhui had asked Jihoon to teach Minghao how to shoot, so Junhui had bought other Han-male around. Minghao hadn't gone arse over head at his first experience if the kick-back, either. Minghao gave cause to all the rough sex he had. Jihoon laughed at that, imagining Minghao getting thrown around and shoved up and down like a rag doll.

"Skinny fucking bitch." Jihoon re-lit his offed cigarette, his tone nearly affectionate. Minghao teased, turning the gun on him. Jihoon raised an eyebrow.

"Feeling unsure of your naked body?" Jihoon remarked. Minghao scoffed dirtily, and rolled his eyes. "Back to the practice bitch, and fucking watch it. Dirty whore." 

Minghao grinned broadly, lining up the sight of the gun once more. Jihoon taught him how to empty the user cartridge from the gun, before he went back inside and opened his front door just as Elisabeth Traeovsky opened the black door of her 2009 re-make model Volkswagen Beetle.

She raised an eyebrow at him in a form of "Hello", and her arms were wrapped tightly around her absurdly thin but Tim Burtonesque beautiful body. She was in black jeans with a black tight-fitting top and a black from jacket, getting diluted in colour around the hems from long-wear and washing. She had no make-up on apart from her smudged black-ring eyes that were huge and bottomless, and her hair was loose down either side of her face. Jihoon looked at her.

"I've got a Jazz fag out the back with a gun." Jihoon told Elisabeth. "What a poof." 

Elisabeth burst out into a smile, her head hung slightly, looking up at Jihoon through her thin eyelashes. "That sounds so cool, right now." She said, scuffing the toe of her Doc Marten boots into the ground, just before Jihoon's front doorstep. She came inside. She looked at a sleeping Junhui in Jihoon's sitting room, out out onto a armchair with a matching fabric ottoman, his chin on his chest, arms over either side of the armchairs arms, and his legs out straight on the ottoman.

"What's with him?" Elisabeth asked, her nose wrinkling slightly.

"Doesn't sleep enough and, when he does, it's not at good hours." Jihoon told her. He went to show her to outside where Minghao was hut she pulled her arm and wrist out of his hand and ducked her head, wrapping her arms around herself and going into the kitchen, putting the kettle on. Jihoon realized her hunger pains must have kicked in. He let Elisabeth go; he didn't want a cup of tea to be the difference between her clawing his face and telling him to get out of her life, and their relationship going on. Elisabeth always made the same mistakes, and continued to do them always. Jihoon still loved her. She was like him. The only woman in the whole wide world exactly like him. Jihoon went back outside. Minghao had ran out of bullets, and needed to be taught how to fix that. After Jihoon showed him how to load a new set of ammunition, they wrapped up the end of practice for the day. Minghao sat in another armchair in Jihoon's sitting room, silently watching Junhui sleep; Minghao's head was rested on it's side against his fist, his elbow in the arm of the chair, legs stretched out to the side.

"I won't sleep, I won't sleep

'Til I know you're home

It's a beautiful life

But I don't want to see you fall down into the darkness

Misery, darlin'

I hope you can see

Just what I mean

I want you to live

Because I can't 

Will you call me to tell me you're alright

Because I worry about you."

Minghao sung softly to Junhui. From the kitchen, Elisabeth Traeovsky watched, the mug of tea held in-between her hands too hot, burning her, but she didn't notice with the man singing in the sitting room to his friend, and, essentially, his owner.


	28. Stockwhip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second part to Vernon and Seungkwan's abduction of David Holcroft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, bugger....can't think of anything to put down

"Just make sure that's all there before we drive off." Vernon said, he and Seungkwan opening a suitcase and counting the money M. Hong had given them in the back seat of Seungkwan's Honda CR-V.

"He was itching to get started, wasn't he?" Seungkwan commented of M. Hong. The man's eyes had gleaned viciously and his lips peeled back cruelly gleeful to reveal sharp teeth at the sight of the blood-covered and well-bruised David Holcroft been thrown onto the floor by the bottom of the entry hall staircase of he and his wife's house.

""Course he is." Vernon closed back up the suitcase with all the monies inside. "Hong's a mental cunt." 

"Thank God Joshua took after his Mother instead of him." Seungkwan remarked. He climbed back into the passenger seat and yawned.

"Oh, but he did a bit though." Vernon fumbled with getting the keys into the ignition, and he and Seungkwan both looked around through the back windscreen as a blood-curdling scream of brutalized agony split the air. Seems like M. Hong and Holcroft were getting along then.

"Yeah." Seungkwan squeaked.

"Yeah." Vernon nodded. They didn't speak again for a few minutes as Vernon drove out onto the road, and sped along at 62 miles an hour when the speed limit was 49 miles an hour.

"I've never seen it." Seungkwan said, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the nail of his other thumb, his hands clasped together.

"You've never antagonized him enough to see the "inner psycho cunt" come out." Vernon responded warningly. He put the gearstick through it's drive even though the Honda was a automatic.

"What did you have to do, then?" Seungkwan asked.

"Made a comment about Jeonghan." Vernon quipped. Seungkwan asked him how Joshua reacted. Vernon replied that Joshua got him with a stockwhip.

"You're fucking kidding " Seungkwan's eyes widened at the normally kind-natured - ok, kind-natured with a bit if a fuck-boy crossover - young man.

"Yeah, nah, it's alright. Chased me around for a bit." Vernon winced slightly at the memory. "Got me inbetween me legs though. And my head. And my chest. That's why you didn't see much of me for a few days after we got back from the bash at the Yoon's. Me and Sofe sat him down and had a talk to him over Jeonghan, and...he just exploded. He and Jeonghan had a bit of a blue, I think." Vernon didn't say to Seungkwan what has actually gone on between Jeonghan and Joshua that night at Joshua's parents house.

Seungkwan looked inbetween Vernon's legs. He wondered if Vernon was still capable of having kids after that incident with Joshua. "And he reckons the Jeons are nutters." Seungkwan murmured.

"The Jeons are fucking nutters, but you shouldn't judge people on their religion." Vernon agreed. Wonwoo was alright...deep down after quite a few years. Vernon thought that Soonyoung had calmed Wonwoo down considerably. He turned on the radio, but turned it off again at the sound if a crap girl KPOP group music. Seungkwan laughed.

"You learn a lot about someone due to their religion." Seungkwan admitted, reclining the passenger seat back a little bit.

"I was just going to say that." Vernon's eyesbrows rose in surprise. "When I'm ranting and raving, you actually listen to what I say?" 

Seungkwan nodded. "Of course I do." He said. "I don't always like it, but that's just me. You're really clever, anyway. You know what you're saying." 

Vernon was rather chuffed if he said so himself. Holcroft's screaming still hung faintly in the back of his head.


	29. Memoriam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaws and M. Hong slaughter David Holcroft, and Jeonghan likes watching Joshua in sex. Jeonghan remembers a shocking conversation with Junhui and Minghao.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Chapter 29 here!

Jaws walked along the pitch-black garden path, the night heavily fallen. He entered the Hong's house from the back gardens, and went down to the basement, thirteen feet beneath the ground. He smiled at Mrs Hong who was waiting for him to come. "He's in there." She said tiredly of her husband. Instead of shaking her hand - the first time of which Jaws had nearly crushed her fingers with his massive hand - patted the top of her head gently.

The woman smiled and left the men to peace. He walked in to see a brightly lit concrete room, and M. Hong standing above David Holcroft who was bound up and conscious on a table-top's surface. David screamed as Hong applied a electronic cattle-prod to his chest. Schubert played from a gramophone in the background. 

"Clean him up, will you?" Hong asked brightly. Jaws smiled and nodded. Hong's hands and clothes were covered in blood spilled from Holcroft, who was similarly covered in it. He had visible stab wounds. Interesting that Hong wanted to do this instead of letting Holcroft bleed out on the floor. As Jaws drew closer, he saw the wounds were torture wounds. To bleed out from them, Holcroft would need a series of bashing and about thirty-six hours. Not very efficient.

"Which way?" Jaws asked.

"Second way." Hong answered. Jaws sat down on the edge of the table, and pulled Holcroft's upper body into his lap. With one twist of his both of hands on the man's neck, Jaws broke Holcroft's neck and cracked his spinal cord. The bone ruptured up through his throat. Hong began to giggle, and then burst out laughing.

"What a cunt!" He yelled, before spitting onto the ground, into a pooling trail of clotted and messy and thick blood that had come from Holcroft's body.

-

Joshua moaned in his throat, his teeth clenching together and his eyes slipping closed as Jeonghan's palm ran up the inside of his thigh and Jeonghan sucked a hickey onto the point if his chest just below the beginning tip of his collarbone. "Jeonghan -" he groaned as Jeonghan bit him on a fresh spot, his teeth sharp and borderline painful. A nanosecond later, Jeonghan's mouth covered his, and Joshua couldn't help but lift his hips to press up against Jeonghan's.

"I love watching you in sex." Jeonghan murmured, his lips sliding along Joshua's cheek to his ear. "I love seeing you receive it." 

"And admit it; you get off on being in control." Joshua replied. He wrapped his arms around Jeonghan's body and held him I'm close as Jeonghan's hair moved over his throat and Jeonghan's mouth pressed to the patch of skin just below Joshua's ear. Most people went wild when teeth nipped there; they went like animals. Jeonghan wanted to see Joshua's animal; he wanted as well to see Joshua's monster. He had once deeply shocked Junhui and Minghao.

"What would your perfect date be, hyung?" Minghao had asked, a bottle of red wine halfway to his smiling mouth. 

"I meet someone beautiful, I talk to them, and I see them. We get home, they see my skin and I see their animal, and their monster. As they hurt me I'm a God until they submit, and then they see my animal. And when we're nearly unconscious on the floor, that's how we know if it is or not." Jeonghan had replied.

The bottle of red wine had slipped from Minghao's grasp and had shattered down into the floor.


	30. Naked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minghao and Junhui connect in the club's bar, and are interrupted by Vernon that tells them news of David Holcroft's demise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw a film earlier today, a Chinese film; "Coming Home". It's about a man who was a political prisoner, and when he was eventually released, he comes home to a heavily traumatized and disturbed wife who cannot remember him, and so as she grows older and her mental condition is still unstable, he plays a friend to her, reading her a box of letters that he wrote for her in prison. She does not know it is him, and is incapable of understanding her neighbour and friend and letter-reader is her husband. It's a very sad story, but it's beautiful. Set from the late 60's to the 80's. Central to the story is their former-ballerina daughter, Dandan, who put of fear and foolishness had her Father thrown back into prison when he escaped and tried to visit her mother when she was about 15-17 years old, and dying of loyalty to the Chinese Communist State and her beloved ballet, which only fuelled her Mothers heartbreak. She lives with her "rehabilitated" Father across the road from her childhood home and her ill Mothers apartment

"What more are we going to do?" Minghao asked Junhui. For some reason, Minghao was wandering around the club naked. He had suggested to Junhui about doing a nude set, an art-form; a piece of clothing came off with each song. Junhui couldn't look at Minghao's face without looking at his cock. Junhui wondered if Minghao noticed.

Junhui shrugged. Minghao was off the nude performance topic now. He was asking about. 

"Ok, tell me this instead." Minghao leapt off the stage. Junhui tried not to look - for how absurd it was - as Minghao's cock bounced up and down as he moved. "Why did Jihoon want to give me shooting lessons?" Minghao crossed his arms. "Whatever I do is not what you lot do, and whatever you do is not what they do." 

"You're not really there, Minghao." Junhui said. "And you can't know when you're not really there. You don't know how it feels to have a knife against your skin and the person holding it wanting to tear you apart because they think you're absolutely disgusting, or because it's for their pride - get rid of that to sustain and uphold whatever it is that matters to them. Sometimes it's out of fear. Fear turns us into animals; crazy animals. We do things we normally swear blind we wouldn't. You're a Jazz singer in the club, Hao." Junhui's nail dragged down over his upper eyelid in a itch. "I think Wonwoo's caused a bit of a problem with Gyu. He tells Gyu he wants him and then tells him he's not good enough -"

"Baby, just come right here." Minghao had walked to the bar and caught one side of Junhui's face in his hands; they both moved over the surface of the bar, and Minghao kissed Junhui. Minghao thought Junhui tasted like cigarettes. Junhui was too stunned with this overwhelming heat and electricity he was given from Minghao's kiss.

"Oh, mother-fucking Christ!" 

The two of them broke away to see Marya with her head bowed and her hands clasped together at her front, having escorted Vernon inside. Vernon crossed his arms and looked at Minghao in the nuddy, and the kiss-flushed Junhui.

"Woof." Vernon further remarked. Minghao burst out laughing.

"Come here and give us a kiss!" Minghao held up an arm and took over Junhui's loud-mouth role as the club's owner went practically catatonic, staring down at the surface of the bar. Vernon consented to giving Minghao a hug, but not a kiss. He groaned and dusted off his trousers where Minghao's cock had pressed up against him as they had embraced.

"Get something on, you dirty bitch." Vernon told him. Minghao rolled his eyes and got himself in hand, waving his length at Vernon like a sword. Vernon let our a revolted yelp and leapt away. Minghao burst out laughing and laughed harder as Marya lost the plot and joined in the comedy as well.

"Will that be all, sir?" She addressed Junhui a few moments after she had stopped laughing. Junhui was a world away; he didn't even hear her.

"Yeah, we're good, Marya." Minghao nodded to her. Marya disappeared.

"Ok, quick thing, remember David Holcroft?" Vernon leant against the bar, talking to Junhui. Junhui blinked slowly. Minghao rolled his eyes again. He leant over the bar and slapped Junhui across the face. Junhui came to it. Vernon mouthed, "Ouch, bitch!" At Minghao. Minghao groped Vernon's penis through the front if his trousers. Vernon punched Minghao in the chest. Minghao grinned ans buffered off. Vernon repeated his quip, and Junhui nodded.

"He's dead, now, between you and me." Vernon told Junhui. Junhui's eyes widened.

"Really?" Junhui asked. Vernon nodded. Junhui poured him a drink.

"Fucking hell." Junhui said. As he drank the soju, his lips felt numb against the glass, still electrified and pressured from Minghao's kiss.

"Can we afford to kill the rest of the list?" A twisted and psychopathic high began to un-wrap itself, fresh and bright and new and remembered, in Junhui's system, poisoning and pleasuring him. Vernon shook his head.

"Leave it for a little while. They're going to want to play the game, too. But we're not gonna lose." Vernon winked at Junhui as he took a drink of soju.

"You told Hong?" Junhui asked about Joshua's Father. The look in Vernon's eyes told Junhui everything. Junhui began to chuckle, before his gaze fixed clearly on Vernon's.

"I just want to kill someone now." He whispered the confession. 

"You want to fuck someone now." Vernon corrected. "Similar feeling, but different thing." 


	31. Injury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chan sustains a injury during a armed robbery with Hitler - M. Tudur - and Jaws. He comes to Wonwoo for help

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goddess, how quickly you are reminded that most people are cunts and dating sucks...*claws out*
> 
> Yes, it's gone from 50 chapters...to 60 chapters...now officially 110 chapters. I changed it to 110 chapters, because, honestly, as far as I'm concerned, it's a realism

"Feels like there's something broken inside." 

Wonwoo lightly pressed his fingertips along Chan's naked torso. There was swelling from the hits he had taken. Wonwoo knew he should worry, but he never worried about anything. "You need to rest. You need to not do anything." 

"Can I put my clothes back on?" Chan asked. "It's fucking freezing down here." 

"Don't swear in my temple." Wonwoo frowned. 

"Sorry." Chan said meekly. The last thing he needed was for a fucked-off Wonwoo when he needed the man in question to help him.

"How did it happen?" Wonwoo asked. Chan wondered whether or not to tell Wonwoo the whole truth. 

"Uncle Jaws and Hitler invited me to come our and do some work with them." Chan told Wonwoo the truth. "But I had to make a run for it at one stage and where I dived out the window I collides - my mid-front did anyway - with the edge of a brick wall as I came down. Jaws and Hitler fixed up the rest of it and I -" 

"Got a 100 mile lift up here to me from Seoul from either Jaws or Hitler because you couldn't go to a proper hospital without being hunted down?" Wonwoo finished the rest of Chan's explanation. Chan nodded.

"Why the hell did you get involved with it?" Wonwoo asked. "Ans define "work" for me?" 

Chan swallowed. "Armed robbery." He admitted. Wonwoo raised an eyebrow coldly. "What?" Chan argued, suddenly cross. "Just because all you lot do is bewitch people and that -"

"Shut up." Wonwoo said clearly. "Don't tell me anymore. I'm going to give you something to make you go to sleep so you're brain and nervous system can relax, understand?" 

Chan had no choice but to nod. He closed his eyes and Wonwoo tilted his head on the ground to one side and told him to exhale as he injected the substance into his neck. Within a few seconds, Chan was unconscious.


	32. Myriad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junhui uses Minghao as sexual inspiration, Jihoon wonders about proposing to Elisabeth, Wonwoo is viciously affected by Mingyu, and, in turn, he hurts the other man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not that the shops are open with the COVID-19 lockdown, but I wish I could get some fabric. I saw the MV for LION by (G) I-DLE and now I want to make all the dresses from the first choreography scene *laughing*

"Turn around to look at the wall." 

Minghao's eyes closed, his breath catching silently in his chest, one if his hands moving down to hold his wrist, and one of his knees bending slightly, his posture relaxed and natural, not rigid. The sound of Junhui's not quite silent breathing and the slick wet sound of him masturbating made Minghao's stomach knot up wonderfully...even if technically he was on the outside.

Time seemed to go by incredibly slowly as Minghao's waited and listened on Junhui's self-administrated sex.

"Junhui -" Minghao said slowly. 

"No, don't move." Junhui's breath came out in a gasp. "Please, don't move." 

The one word washed over Minghao like a fiery shower. Please. His mouth came open, chest and throat throbbing silently as the sounds of Junhui's body grew slicker. Minghao's body swayed slightly, feeling Junhui's gaze on him.

-

Jihoon lay in his bed with Elisabeth. He looked up at the darkness-drowned ceiling, and then down at Elisabeth's head of dark brown hair. He thought. He didn't know what she'd do if he asked her to marry him.

\- 

Wonwoo through a knife at the wall, and it landed perfectly. He balanced the next knife in his hand and considered a matter for a moment before hurling that as well. It landed correctly beside it's brother. He thought about Mingyu.

-

Mingyu lurched for his phone. He just had this feeling inside. He couldn't help it. He knew in his chest and gut and head that it was something to do with Wonwoo. He picked it up and called Wonwoo. Mingyu nearly combusted as it took for the fourth ring for Wonwoo to pick up.

"Hello?" Wonwoo's voice hit Mingyu's ears. He released something in Mingyu. He felt so peaceful.

"Where are you?" Mingyu asked.

"I don't want to see you." Wonwoo said.

Mingyu felt like somebody had stabbed him all over his body.

"Chan got hurt. I'm looking after him." Wonwoo said. Mingyu didn't feel that much better. "Go and do your work." Wonwoo continued to talk. Mingyu clung onto every word. "But just teach him to keep it in his pants and tell him to stop." 

Mingyu had no idea what Wonwoo was talking about. All of a sudden, Mingyu swore he could smell Wonwoo's scent; his skin, his hair, as thought the nan was right beside him. 

But then it vanished.


	33. Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeonghan's Uncle and Father drag him away from Joshua in a attempt to split the two of them up. It ends badly for Jeonghan's Uncle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Paris In The Rain" by LAUV is such a good song

Joshua's eyes opened to look at the man above him. Immediately, Joshua knew that it wasn't what anybody else on Earth could possibly perceive, and he knew that Jeonghan's body wasn't beside his in his bed anymore.

"How the fuck did you get into my house?" Joshua asked lightly.

Hitler looked back down at him coldly. "Get your clothes on and come with me." 

"How do you know in naked?" Joshua grinned nastily. Hitler hit him across the face with the hand-gun. 

"Do as you're fucking told." Hitler commanded. Joshua chuckled, leaning up on one elbow, his fingertips going to his now bloody nose.

"Sure you don't want a ride?" Joshua quipped. "Everyone knows you're a big fag." 

A little voice in the back of Joshua's head murmured, "Oh, dear.", just before Hitler proceeded to beat the seven shades if shit out of him.

-

"You really feel the need to put your own son in a cage?" Jeonghan demanded of his Uncle and Father angrily, cooped up very tightly in a animal cage in the back of the Range Rover.

"Be grateful it's not a airless Tupperware box, you little cunt." His Uncle told him, glancing at his nephew in the revision mirror from the drivers seat.

Jeonghan wasn't scared if his Uncle or his Father at that moment. He was utterly fucking furious.

"You have disgraced this family." His Father said.

"Fucking relax, no one knows unless they heard you and your cunt of a brother having a sook and trying to slap Mrs Hong and Mrs Choi in the face." 

His Uncle, who wad driving, pulled the Range Rover over to the side of the road very violently, sending gravel and dirt flying. Jeonghan's breath caught in his chest as suddenly his Father and Uncle were shouting abuse at one another and at him. His Uncle tore from the front of the car with a knife wielded in his hand, and his Father tore around the other side of the car, racing to protect his only child. Just as Uncle opened the boot lid, and pulled at the cage with Jeonghan's trapped body inside to break it open and stab him. Jeonghan, already in a ball, curled up tighter as his Father aimed his gun at his brothers shoulder and pulled the trigger. His Uncle screamed as his flesh was injured; he staggered. Uncle dropped the knife to the ground and doubled over. Jeonghan's Father kicked his brother in the chest, before shoving his son still the cage further back into the boot of the Range Rover. Jeonghan hears his Father scream as loud and as viciously and as animalistically as he had ever done.

Don't you dare hurt my child, played over and over in Jeonghan's head that night as he thought in equal gravity about Joshua. His Father had let him out of the cage and had told him to run. All had been forgotten earlier. How Jeonghan had resisted his family dragging him away, binding him up. Jeonghan slept that night out in the dark, not knowing of anything and everything except how tragic and human they all were. 

Jeonghan still loved his Father, and his Uncle, even for all they did.

It was something he could never stop feeling. But then there was Joshua...look at how complicated it got? 


	34. Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo buckles under the weight of his regret and fury and shame of his relationship with Mingyu, and breaks Chan's wrist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You could have the opinion that Wonwoo is been written quite violently, quite ill. But there's something quite real about the insanity - as most people would opine - if his regret and his shame. I want to really show that

"How do you feel today?" Wonwoo asked Chan as the young man woke. 

  


Chen looked at him from his sleeping may on the floor. "Have you secretly given me a happy drug or something?" He asked Wonwoo. Wonwoo knelt in his knees besides Chan on the floor and smiled.

  


"No, that's just Soonyoung." Wonwoo replied, his tone quiet and deep. He pressed the back of his hand against Chan's forehead. In the distance, one of the men sung.

  


"That sounds nice." Chan said of it. Wonwoo hummed, nodding.

  


"It's about a man who fell in love with both the fire and the earth." Wonwoo told him. The swelling of Chan's torso had gone down, bit he was heavily bruised and his ribs were damaged. The only reason he wasn't feeling anything was because Wonwoo had put a grass-root anaesthesia into his blood.

  


Partly the reason Chan felt so cheerful. Very briefly, Wonwoo got a flashback to Mingyu.

  


"Cunt." He murmured under his breath, unable to help the furious punch of shame and dead and sickness that washed through his blood, turning the red black and the red tattoos on his skin too bright from the now pale flesh. 

  


"What?" Chan giggled. He touched Wonwoo's face. "Are you alright?" 

  


Wonwoo nodded. Of course he was fine. He was utterly fine. Even though he felt like Jaws had a grip on the back of his neck, pulling him down to the depths of black, black water.

  


He should never have gotten involved with Kim Mingyu.

  


But he was a despicable and foolish cunt wasn't he? 

  


"Wonwoo?" Chan was afraid as where Wonwoo's hand came to hold his wrist where Chan was touching his face, Wonwoo was now squeezing his wrist hard enough for it to be very painful. Wonwoo's eyes were closed, and with each second passing his punishing grip became only harder.

  


But only when Wonwoo was with Mingyu did he feel human, did he feel clean. 

  


But Wonwoo didn't want that; he hated it, despised it. Fucking human - that was disgusting filth. Pathetic. Weak. And clean? No one in the world was clean, no one wad pure. Purity was it's own version of disgusting filth. Pure was the romantic's word for naive, belligerent, dumb, infantile - 

  


Wonwoo roared out if fury and pain, and twisted in such a way that with his trip still like a vice on poor Chan's arm, he broke it with a sharp snap ans a agonized cry from Chan, who was utterly, utterly terrified.

  



	35. Drug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua takes a drug and moves on Junhui in the club

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course, the song is PERFECT PLACES by LORDE from her 2017 album MELODRAMA. I was trying to find a good Jazz song I could use - Joshua is missing Jeonghan's, Minghao is a bit frail and trying to make the best if everything though it's hard for him - and I just decided, "Stuff it. Just imagine something suitable in a Jazz concept."   
> Hope thus goes down well :)

"Every night, I live and die..." Joshua tipped to the side slightly in the Yoon's booth as he watched Minghao sing and around thirty couples and friends in the dance floor. Joshua glanced between the trumpeters and the drummer and the cymbolist and the cellos and the haze of cigarette smoke that hung above their heads. There was a new face playing the Valkriye piano. He slipped two Nurofen tablets into his mouth and swallowed them down with a glass of water that to anyone else looked like straight-up gin.

"Meet somebody take 'em home 

Lets kiss and then take off our clothes -" 

You'd have loved this, Joshua thought, looking to his side and seeing Jeonghan there for a moment before the dream ended. He decided to ask Minghao to sing that song another night when he could be with Jeonghan.

"It's just another graceless night, 'cause..."

Joshua's eyes tipped back into his head as the drug took hold.

God, he just wanted to fuck.

-

"All the night spent off our faces

Trying to to find these perfect places

What the fuck are perfect places

Anyway?" 

Junhui looked across from the second-floor stairwell of his club to Joshua down in the Yoon's booth. Junhui hadn't seen Marya in a time of space enough for her to tell him that "M. Hong has called". Junhui went down to see him.

"Shua." Junhui grinned and slid down into the booth next to Joshua. Joshua's head tipped to the side, and his eyes looked hazy. Junhui's grin skipped off his face as he took in Joshua. "Shua, you alright, hyung?" 

Joshua blinked slowly before his hands wrapped around Junhui's neck and he kissed him.

"All the night spent off our faces

Trying to find these perfect places

What the fuck are perfect places

Anyway?" 

Minghao's eyes as they swept over the club didn't see Junhui kissing Joshua; he only saw the dancing to the piano in the clubs floor.

"Joshua -" Junhui gasped against Joshua's mouth, his hand pressing against Joshua's chest. It had been the most unexpected thing that Junhui had ever experienced. Not even the deaths of his parents had felt like this; Junhui had always known that their end would come prematurely. Everyone else had known the same as him. Junhui felt horrific. He remembered Minghao telling him of how in love he was with the older man. How it should be Minghao Joshua was moving onto, instead of him. "Just let me get Hao -" 

"No, just -"

"Josh, you're on drugs or heat of something, you need to stop, stop, please, cut it out." Junhui got Joshua off him. They were both breathing heavily, their skin flushed and their mouths stinging and filled with blood.

"Come with me, please." Junhui said.


	36. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua seduces Minghao, and Chakan finds a very sick Jeonghan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've changed the rating from TEEN AND UP AUDIENCES to MATURE, because I've decided to write some quite...graphically insane detail as the work progresses, and even though it's quite moderate and almost a bit of a comedy in the beginning, it ascends to something more cut

Minghao finally got all that he had truly ever wanted. As Joshua's body came towards his, Minghao fell into a electrified awe that he was able to have it. After all these years - even though there had been that one time that Minghao had gone down on Joshua beneath the booth table - Joshua was giving it to him. Minghao remembered the weight and volume of Joshua's cock against his tongue from that time on the club floor as in that present moment Joshua's hands threaded through Minghao's hair and his tongue slipped into Minghao's mouth.

Minghao didn't think about Jeonghan.

Minghao distantly heard Marya singing on the stage, taking his place. One of her Russian-language Jazz songs.

-

"Oh, Jeonghan." Chakan's tome was nearly wounded, but it couldn't be quite told except by the man who himself felt, keeping his tone nearly imperceptible. The young man was very, very cold, but his immune system burnt a fever. Chakan found Jeonghan down the road; Chakan had accompanied two of the maids grocery shopping, and they had found him passed out on the side of the road, one that lead to the Estate's entrance. Keeping his clothes on for privacy, Chakan ordered all the maids and other servants to not come anywhere near M. Yoon's rooms, and he emmersed Jeonghan into a bath of hot water, trying to bring the body temperature of the young man back to a regarded state. Jeonghan had woke up a bit in the car, but he was very ill. Chakan listened to Jeonghan as he explained in a hoarse tone, his throat scrubbed raw, at what his Father and Uncle had done to him, and to Joshua, and then to each other. Chakan was loyal to Jeonghan, but at the end of the day, Jeonghan was the child and nephew to the two men he was loyal too most.

"Where's your Uncle?" Chakan asked. Jeonghan shrugged.

"Probably screamed in the forests until the Jeon's found him, or he's dead, somewhere." Jeonghan chuckled drily, and looked up at the ceiling. Chakan put more hot water into the bath and ran his hand through it, spreading the temperature.

"Chakan, have you ever had this feeling in your chest - something...spiritual - that you sort of know what's happening to someone else even though you don't know?" Jeonghan asked the Serbian man slowly.

Chakan didn't answer that. He was quiet. The army of his youth and taught him not to talk.


	37. Jaws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaws visit Junhui on request for Jihoon's contact details, and assaults him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Particularly in this chapter and the next, I'm starting to show a bit more of Jaws character

Jaws came to visit Junhui.

"You lie." The Serbian man told him.

"Do I?" Junhui asked, looking up at the seven-foot-two human being. 

"You tell me you not have apartments here at club; you must do." Jaws smiled; but it was a frightening sight. Jaws had a interesting face. Quirky interesting...by 70's standards. 

The decade taste and beauty forgot.

"Can you give me M. Li's phone number?" Jaws asked, putting his hands into the pockets of his tailored jeans. Well, in all honesty, all of Jaws clothes had to be the product of expert tailoring.

"Hang on, which one?" Junhui questioned. "Seokmin's lot, Jihoon's lot, or Chan's lot." 

"I no want the Father." Jaws replied. "I want the son. Jihoon." 

"Can I ask why?" Jaws grinned. He yelled and seized into the giants man wrist, and his legs against the Serbian man's hip trying to support himself as Jaws hands picked him up by his head and neck. Junhui closed his eyes as Jaws shook him by his head and neck. Junhui's eyes flew open with a gasp. His vision was spotty and hazy as he felt something crack in his neck, before moving like lightening through the right side of his face and temple then along his scalp. Junhui knew Jaws hadn't broken his neck, but there was something else wrong; jaws threw him to the ground.

"M. Li's phone number." Jaws stated. Junhui groaned as he got up from the floor, his body protesting. "Don't waste my time." 

No wonder Jaws and Hitler are such good mates, Junhui thought. He went to the bar and wrote down Jihoon's contact details. Jaws observed them before he took one look at Junhui and punched him in the face so hard that Junhui fell to the floor, unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think of Jaws as a character in this book?


	38. Haf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mrs Hong talks to Joshua of how she thought he might marry Haf, one of Hitler's daughters, and Joshua explains that he can't leave Jeonghan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...don't know what to put :)

Joshua found out some interesting things from his Mother. It turned out the bromance if Hitler and Jaws - M. Kiel and M. Tudur - had come to an end. Due to their opinion of relationships. Hitler had sided with the Yoons on the fact that Joshua had seduced and had sexually abused the much damaged Jeonghan. Meanwhile, Jaws thought - and had told M. and Mrs Hong - that Jeonghan and Joshua made a handsome couple, and no one had the right to a comment; Joshua and Jeonghan weren't pushing anyone's noses into it. It was possibly the most secret relationship on Earth. "Russian cunts." Joshua said at the thought of Hitler.

"Tudur isn't Russian." His Mother told him.

"What the fuck is he, then?" Joshua groaned. He had severe internal injuries, and the medicine he took for the pain - it always seemed to Joshua that the pain hit a peak before it began to slowly - very slowly - become gentle.

"Welsh." Mrs Hong sat on the edge if her sons bed. He wasn't capable of moving around. Joshua had been moved back into his parents house so he could recover in private care, instead of a hospital.

"Where that?" Joshua asked. "He sounds like a Brit." 

"Wales is a little native country next to England." 

"Cunt of a place." 

Mrs Hong would have usually torn strips off her son for swearing, but this was understandable. "His daughters - Arianrhod, Lloyde, Eira, Dghoco and Haf - are the most well-mannered and kind girls I've ever come across." 

"Must have taken after their Grandmother." Joshua smiled. Hitler's wife - before her multiple sclerosis death - had been a certified psychotic.

"I thought you might have loved one of them, once." Mrs Hong touched her sons knew over the top of the covers. "Arianrhod is honestly too much like her Father, but she had a kindness, but the girls scared of true love for other than her blood. It's sad. Dghoco is wild, she needs a gypsy, and Lloyde and Eira are better suited for the Jeon boys, I think." She smiled a little. "Haf was always the most lovely. Sweet and kind and merciful and talented." 

"I'm sorry, Mum." Joshua held her hand. "Would you rather I...I can't leave him." He said of Jeonghan. "But wouldn't it be horrible for Haf to have a third person in our marriage?" 

Mrs Hong squeezed Joshua's hand.


	39. Hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jihoon visits Seungcheol in hospital and tells him of how Elisabeth left him after he proposed to her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't stop listening to PARIS IN THE RAIN by LAUV; it just feels so right when I'm writing :)

Jihoon sat at Seungcheol's bedside; Seungcheol had a IV drip in his arm and he was breathing only due to a oxi-tank. Seungcheol was in a private room, but the Hospital was largely quiet. Seungcheol's colourless and weary eyes blinked slowly, gazing at Jihoon.

"I'm very ill." Seungcheol said in a form of realization.

Jihoon nodded, before fucking his head and running his hand over his hair st the back of his head. He thumb snagged along the nape of his neck, and suddenly a soft release came. His thumbnail had cut through a spot he didn't realize he had had. Jihoon observed it for a millisecond before he brought his hand down; small, bone-coloured blackhead. He wiped it out of his thumbnail onto his jeans. He thought.

"I asked Elisabeth to marry me." He rolls Seungcheol. Seungcheol smiled softly.

"Oh, Hoonie, ilk definitely have to stay alive to be around for the wedding..." He reached out to fist-bump Jihoon, and Jihoon fist-bumped Seungcheol, but then he held Seungcheol's hand with one of his. Jihoon leant back into the chair, and stretched his legs out straight, crossed at the ankle, half beneath Seungcheol's bed.

"But she exploded at me." Jihoon said. "She pushed me into a table, and told me off for thinking that she could do that kind if commitment. She just screamed until she said, "Get out of my life." Jihoon sighed, and looked up at the ceiling. "She's gone back to England. I'm never going to see her again, and I suppose that's alright." 

Seungcheol gazed at him. "You really loved her." Seungcheol said.

"She was damaged." Jihoon dismissed. "All damaged people are a pain in the arse and a waste of time." 

At Jihoon's words, Seungcheol felt bitter and grievous shame rise up in himself. Jihoon must have seen it show on Seungcheol's statuesque still body.

"No, not you, hyung." Jihoon's hand squeezed the hand of Seungcheol's that had gone limo in his. As Seungcheol went to pull away, Jihoon held onto his harder.

"No, you don't." Jihoon said. He looked piercingly at Seungcheol. "Don't worry about a dumb fucking comment I made because the woman I wanted to be my wife told me I was a cunt. Don't fucking think about it like that." Jihoon relaxed his grip on Seungcheol slightly, suddenly aware that he might be crushing the other man's fingers.

"I always thought that you might end Ir, instead of her." Seungcheol quietly admitted.

"Why's that?" Jihoon asked.

Seungcheol shook his head. "I don't know, Jihoon. I don't know. I guess I thought you might get sick of her one day. You'd want someone better." 

A silence pooled in-between them. "There was no better than her." Jihoon remarked, before leaning his head down and resting his forehead on he and Seungcheol's entwined hands.


	40. Arianrhod

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chan becomes infatuated with Hitler's eldest daughter, Arianrhod

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, bit I didn't really feel like typing much today. I was trying to transfer a 180,000 word document for a publisher from my computer to my phone so I could send it in a email to him...and it didn't work. I may have to type those 180,000 words all over again on my phone and send them chapter by chapter per day...and there's 350 chapters. I'm quite upset, to be perfectly honest.  
> Arianrhod named after the Indigenous Cymry Pagan Fate and Lunar Goddess.

Chan never wanted to see Wonwoo again. 

Uncle Jaws and his Father had had a git when they had seen Chan's arm wrapped up in plaster.

But it came with added benefits. Despite Christian Tudur - Hitler - not been friendly with Jaws anymore and therefore all of Jaws friends, Hitler's daughters were still fluttering about as per normal. Haf was sweet and kind and smiled at Chan in a way that was lovely, but it was the attention if Arianrhod that Chan wanted. The eldest Tudur daughter. Jaws was having a bit of a stay at the Lee's house, and Arianrhod brought all her sisters to visit Jaws. With Jaws only marrying once and the bride dead, he had no children. He was like a second Father to all of the Tudur girls. Chan smiled at the sight of Eira, Lloyde, Dghoco and Haf all between the ages of thirteen and eighteen laughing and climbing all over Jaws and talking to him in a mix of Russian and English and Cymraeg. Arainrhod was the eldest and the most graceful and cold at twenty-two. A year older than Chan. He got talking to her all that day. For all her Mothers psychopathy, Arianrhod was a astounding looking woman. Chan thought she should be on the front if a magazine or a film screen or something like that. She had her hair in a beautifully arranged chignon with a Edwardian-style walking skirt with a double row of buttons at the front and a fitted white turtleneck which contrasted nicely of the grey wool of her skirt. Her tan leather boots clicked as she walked. Her skin was dark olive and her hair was thick and black; it infuriated her and her Father that most people took her for South Italian, Arabian, or Jewish, rather than her indigenous race. Chan had heard Eira and Lloyde say that Arianrhod looked a bit like Lily Aldridge. But a very Indigenous Cymry Lily Aldridge. Chan thought he might have fallen in love with her a little bit as they went into the kitchen and she made mugs of tea for Jaws and her sisters, and made a strong coffee for Chan's Mother. She looked so pretty, just moving about doing domestic things, woman things. Chan thought there was nothing nicer than to watch a woman shifting through cupboards and draws and swearing because where did someone else put the tea-spoons? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the costume design of the original female characters in the story - especially the Tudur girls - they are always quite old world things. But the thing is, this is a common place thing. Any old world race woman with any sort of money or standing - especially in Cymru - where's old world style things. Even the common girls were 30's and 40's style cotton dresses. It's not really a religeous thing; it's just what Cymru people do


	41. The Light Surrounding You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seungkwan relapses into a emotional attack over the fate of David Holcroft, and Vernon comes to comfort him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very special chapter for Pebbs. I hope you like the song, too. The rest of the song will be featured in another chapter with Minghao soon, if you feel you want to know the rest of it. I hope you like this too, my dear

Seungkwan's hands shook as he picked up his phone and dialed Vernon's number from his apartment in the city. "Hey, Vern?" Seungkwan's tone was ugly and faint as Vernon picked up the line.

"Hey, mate, how are you?" Vernon asked. Seungkwan flinched. What was he even fucking doing? It was half-midnight.

But Vernon was still awake.

"Have you ever had that thing where you can't sleep and you can't move because suddenly you remember that you're human and all the shit you've done -" Seungkwan broke off, his voice leaving him, tears of regret for the fate of David Holcroft - even though he was a cunt - rolled down his face. He hurriedly hung up the phone to Vernon. Seungkwan couldn't eat or sleep or think properly. It was the worst grief, depression, anxiety, whatever you wanted to call it. Seungkwan was deeply ashamed of himself at how he was carrying on, and how he was inflicting other such bullshit on Vernon. Seungkwan laid down on his bed and tried to go to sleep, forcing his eyes shut, but it only made him feel worse, his lungs pumping in and out air erratically.

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on his front door. Seungkwan froze. No, no, no! The words nearly fore from his head to his throat to become a scream of regret as he knew that Vernon was outside his front door. He couldn't go and answer it. He just couldn't.

"Seungkwan, it's just us, mate, it's alright, open up the door, eh?" Vernon said to the door. He didn't need to shout; one, it would wake all of the neighbours, and it was quiet enough for him just speaking to be heard. Vernon had brought his sister Sofia with him; they both knew that most people thought it was weird they shared a apartment home together, brother and sister journalists in their earlier twenties. Incest remarks played sharply over in Vernon's head. Vernon forced them to bugger off. Vernon looked as Sofia crouched down until her mouth was by the key-lock of Seungkwan's door.

"And I understand if you don't want to talk to me about it, tonight..." Sofia sung softly and prettily, one of her hands pressed up against the white door for balance. She hummed softly beneath her breath, keeping her focus on the instrumental composition playing in her head so she did not lost her beat. "Hm, tonight." 

Seungkwan slowly straightened up into a sitting position on his bed. All he could hear was the faint noise of traffic six floors below, and Sofia Chwe's voice singing softly in English. He'd recognise Sofia's voice anywhere; for Seungkwan, there was no mistaking it. 

"'Cause I see the light surrounding you 

So don't be afraid of something new." Seungkwan moved to the front door and opened it. Sofia nearly crashed forward into his legs. Vernon took one look at Seungkwan's red and swollen eyes and shepherded him back inside, picking Sofia up from the floor. Sofia walked through the apartment, turning on the TV, then went into the kitchen and put the kettle to boil. Vernon, half having a joke, slow-danced Seungkwan into his bedroom before he laid the two of them down on Seungkwan's bed together. 

"'Cause I see the light surrounding you

So don't be afraid of something new

'Cause I see the light surrounding you

So don't be afraid of what you're turning into." Sofia's voice echoed into every nook and cranny of the world - their world - as Vernon lay on his side, he and Seungkwan gazing at each other. 


	42. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo attacks Mingyu after the other man tells him he's turning into something even Wonwoo himself doesn't recognize if he looks into a mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can be a maniac. But anyone can. I take a animalistic sort of pride in been able to make art and transcending psychology out if something so naturalistic and frightening. I've loved Wonwoo's character, so raw and ashamed and regretful and obsessive and haunting. It's based on the worst parts of me, to tell you the honest truth

"You're losing weight again." Mingyu said over Wonwoo, feeling the hard lines of bones beneath his skin. Wonwoo rolled his eyes hardly. 

Oh, here we go again, he thought. Nonetheless, Mingyu's comments about his weight, Wonwoo wrapped his arms around Mingyu and appreciatively felt how much of Mingyu was there, all firm and wholesome. Mingyu gave very good hugs. There was plenty of him to hold onto.

Mingyu didn't know about the incident with Chan. Thank God.

"You been good?" Mingyu asked, noticing the way that Wonwoo was holding onto him. 

"I've been missing you." 

"You were sick to death of me the other day." 

Wonwoo's grip tightened on Mingyu's body. "I really missed you." 

"You really missed having any sex life." 

Wonwoo's nails dug into Mingyu's skin. Mingyu sucked in a sharp breath, but he didn't let go of Wonwoo or push him away. 

"You don't know what you want." Mingyu continued. "I think that you look at yourself somedays and even you don't know what you're turning into." 

Without giving any pretence, Wonwoo sifted ever so slightly and cruelly sunk his teeth into the side of Mingyu's neck. As Mingyu roared and tried to shove Wonwoo away, blood gushed into Wonwoo's mouth and he mutilated Mingyu's flesh, bringing the other horrific pain.

Mingyu's knees went out from underneath him and he groaned at the sight of blood covering down his body, and across Wonwoo's mouth and chin and chest.

Mingyu just lay down on the ground, his hands half-covering his face as he tried to breathe through the searing pain. "Why did you do this?" He asked Wonwoo, without looking at him. He didn't receive an answer. Wonwoo had run away.


	43. Would He Kill Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua wonders if Jaws would kill Hitler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a line I heard earlier I like;
> 
> "You know me, I am dumb, I am a mess, please don't hold that against me."

"It's just another crazy night..." Jeonghan rolled his eyes, talking on the phone to Joshua.

"I hate everything." Joshua answered. He asked Jeonghan how it all went on from him. Joshua paid careful attention to what Jeonghan said.

"Will your Uncle come back to your place?" 

"I don't think so. I don't think he could stand to see the sight of me or Dad again." 

"But he's his brother." 

"Yeah." Jeonghan sighed silently through his nose. "I had this dream last night. Jaws killed Hitler and adopted all of Hitler's daughters and they went off to live in this really lovely house not far from us and they didn't really know what had happened, and...the oldest one, Arianrhod, she gets married and has the ceremony in the back garden." He chuckled gently. "Crazy, right?" 

Joshua thought about that. Would Jaws actually kill Hitler? No one in their world would deny that Jaws would take care of Hitler's girls - bloody hell, all if them would go in to help to some degree, how much money and empire those children had! - and set them up a home. All of then except Arianrhod were still teenagers. But would Jaws actually kill Hitler? Joshua thought.

"Shua?" Jeonghan asked, wondering where Joshua was.

"Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking." Joshua answered. He wondered if he could pay Jaws to kill Hitler. The two of them - their relationship had severely shattered. Possibly...

"You're not paying attention to me." Jeonghan complained. Joshua ran his hand through his hair.

"Sorry, love." Joshua smiled a little bit. "I'm here." 

"Glad you are." Jeonghan looked out over the gardens. He saw his Father trimming some of the roses that their great-great grandmother had planted just after she was married at seventeen. Everything would be ok. Would it not?


	44. A Thousand Pounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaws gives Jihoon a price to kill Hitler

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ti'n nabod fi   
> Rwy'n fud   
> Rwy'n llanast  
>  peidiwch â dal hynny yn fy erbyn

"£540,000." Jaws said flatly to Jihoon. Jihoon slipped his hands into his pockets. 

"What if he kills me first?" Jihoon quipped to Jaws. Jaws gazed at him. Jihoon continued. "He's the last man - carrier of a 1000 year old native blood-line. He's Welsh. He's ex-navy. He's not just some underclass dickhead with a hand-cannon. He's got five young daughters who can be manipulated and abused and killed. He's not going to go down." 

"I look after his girls." Jaws said. He stretched out one of his long legs, sitting in his armchair. "They know me all their lives, trust me." Jaws paused, his wrist rolling over on the edge of the armchair. "Love me." 

Jihoon looked at Jaws. "He's your best friend." Jihoon said. Jaws asked him to bring over the cigarette ash tray from the mantle over the fire. Jihoon did so, that was alright. Jaws re-lit a half-smoked cigar. He tasted the smoke in his mouth. They were comfortably quiet for a long time. Despite the two of them been very different in size, method, history, age, and race, Jaws and Jihoon were quite alike. "Those girls love their Dad. It would break their hearts and their minds to lose him." Jihoon added. "I know you're angry with him. But you've known him for so long. Consider the type of man he is..." Somewhere distant in the back of Jihoon's head was the quiet disbelief that he was providing a form of comfort, a advice, to Vladimir Rostov Kiel, the Jaws, seven foot two Serbian mercenary anthropological wonder. "He lets you raise and be around his children more than his wife did..." 

"The woman was disturbed." Jaws said in slow Korean, focusing on his cigar. He moved it in-between his index and middle fingers knuckles. "She suffered a mania. She would not stop." 

Jihoon sat down on the floor by Jaws extremely long legs. "Did you kill Mrs Tudur?" He asked. 

Jaws blinked slowly. "She was Mz Greene when she..." He stared ahead of himself. "The girls are happy without her. She was raising them like music, in tune to her psychopathy. Something had to be done. She was raising those girls to hate their Father." 

Jihoon closed his eyes, thumbing his brow. Oh, God, he could imagine. Everyone - as far as everyone was concerned - Jenah Greene had received a MS diagnosis. The irony was, in fact, she was having auto-immune tests done at the time before Jaws decapitated her in the woods bear the border of North Wakes and England, Cheshire.

It was how people like them got even. How animals like them got even. Jihoon touched on Dghoco Tudur. The youngest at thirteen.

"What would Dghoco do without a hug from her Dad everyday?" Jihoon asked. "Hug from both you and her Dad?" 

Jaws deflated rapidly. It was a shock, due to the man being nearly inhumanely large. But Jihoon knew he had dodged a bullet. One that Christian Tudur wouldn't receive. One that wouldn't be put into him, or anyone else he loved. 


	45. Iconic Dates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaws sedated Joshuas mother and abducts him to take him to visit Jeonghan

Jaws visited the Hongs. He came bearing gifts for Mrs Hong. Unbeknowest to the aging woman, it would be a bit of a apology to what he and her husband were going to do later on. Joshua helped her read the microspoic writing on the facing covers of the antique jazz and walrz vinyl records. He wasn't yet allowed to get up and walk about. They both looked down at his elected bedroom floor as they heard Jaws and M. Hong roaring.

"It appears your Father is not happy about something." Mrs Hong deduced. Joshua blinked, feeling hazy and lethargic. He was constantly been fed morphine through a drip in his arm. After a few minutes, his Mother looked much the same. She chuckled, saying that she was getting old and laid down on his bed. Joshua didn't feel very concious, before he realized that he rather wasn't. The last things he mostly remembered was his father telling him it would be alright, they were only going down to the Yoon's. Joshua remembered getting picked up by Jaws, and how secure his arms felt, his chest thick and solid, like a barrell. He dropped down from the Earth.

-

Joshua woke up in a bed beside Jeonghan, and Jeonghan was sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him, gazing down at his face. "Hey, you." Jeonghan broke out into a smile as Joshua fully came to it. "Haven't seen you for a long time." He leant down and kissed Joshua. Joshua's hand came up to touch the side of Jeonghan's face.

"Where's Dad and Jaws?" Joshua asked. Jeonghan grinned.

  
"Just told my Dad he's going to have to get used to the idea of me and you because if not Jaws will force him into it."

  
Joshua laughed softly. "Your Dad won't actually get bullied into it - not by my Dad and Jaws."

  
"No, but he can't be talked around to a few little things - like the fact I'm his only son and he shoudl care about me - and your Dad's probably promised some sort of thing. "Hey, Man, I've got a fully restored £5,000,000 worth Lancaster aeroplane finished in Duxford aerodrome..." Jeonghan mimicked Joshua's Father. Joshua smiled. "Jaws thought you might like to see me." Jeonghan blushed a little bit.

  
"I think he's the nicest man, considering all the stuff we all do that technically makes us cunts." Joshua said quietly. Jeonghan nodded, before kissing him again. It's just what the both of them needed. It was like a new beginning.


	46. Push Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soonyoung talks to Wonwoo about his constant self sabotage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to write something vaguely interesting in here, but I realized that most people wouldn't handle it. I think I'll write it out for A Bag Of Pash For Passion. What happened basically, even though we are in Lockdown, the local Catholic priest and his housekeeper have developed syphilis  
> How's that for a Wednesday evening!!!! Sucked in, the - lets read, shall we?

"Why do you push everyone away?" Soonyoung asked Wonwoo. Wonwoo's eyes flashed. He picked one of the villager's babies up from it's crib in the mountain-side temple and carried her into the kitchen. Wonwoo put a record on the gramophone that Soonyoung's Mother had found at a antique market one day when Wonwoo and Soonyoung were both teenagers. All the babies took well to the soft-sounding Jazz. Wonwoo put her into one of the free-standing cribs in the sitting room by the window, and she fell quite content.

  
The two men went back into the kitchen. Out of internal slaughter of himself, Wonwoo had told Soonyoung what he had done to Mingyu. Soonyoung wasn't very happy, to say the least.

  
Soonyoung had taken a few hits at Wonwoo.

  
"I don't." Wonwoo said, his arms crossed. 

  
"Yeah, you do, hyung." Soonyoung didn't want Wonwoo to turn on him. No, not at all. But he had to be told. "You can be a arsehole, sometimes. You're terrifying. You know people are not like you, and so they get scared, because even if they're bigger than you, stronger than you, you're horrific."

  
Wonwoo's mouth pinched into a thin line. His sharply up-turned eyes glowered darkly at Soonyoung's being.

  
"You hurt everyone at some point. And half the time you don't even realize it." Soonyoung told Wonwoo. Wonwoo's eyes flashed. Soonyoung didn't move away.

  
"I've never hurt you." Wonwoo said.

  
"But you have." Soonyoung replied. He ran as Wonwoo's head ducked. But instead of howling in pain and rage, Wonwoo's eyes watered, contrary to what Soonyoung thought.

  
Soonyoung didn't look back. If he had, he would have known, otherwise.


	47. Watergate Of The Catholic Church

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vernon publishes a document to the world about child sex abuse commited by a high-ranking Catholic Cardinal, and Minghao takes a turn for the worst

Minghao didn't really know what he wanted. Did he want to say to Junhui about that night - sorry, rather, both nights. The one with Joshua and the one with...sort of with him. Minghao's insides knotted painfully at the thought of Joshua. Minghao had to sit down on the couch in his sitting room. Joshua didn't want him. Not really. He was a cheat. He was the cheat. Minghao ran his hands through his hair. His chest ached unbearibly.

-

"You can't do that." Seungcheol told Vernon. They both sat on the couch in he and Sofia's apartment. Seungcheol looked sickly and pale. Vernon was worried about him. With Seungcheol, there wasn't a peak from then he would recover - even temporarily. Weekly, monthly. It was a constant to the point where Vernon would wondered Seungcheol's death-date. "You've not got any actual proof about Jang -"

"I've got the backing of eight international anti-child-sex-abuse authorities - campaings, unions, invesitagtive journalists, and barristers." Vernon said. "And so what if he's a high-ranking Catholic? The cunts will give him up as soon as this comes out. He's not going to be a scape-goat for the other paedophilia in the Church, not when in actualy fact he did it himself." He paused. "Tell you something, Cheol." He said. "My Dad's Mother; her brother and his mates were once down the beach, surfing at Chaeng-gu up on the North-West coast, and they go into the changing rooms. Here's Jang sitting there, early-thirties and glasses, stark naked with a towel over his shoulders, watching all these little boys from a local primary school get changed for swimming lessons in the closed pool by the ocean. Dan and his friends drag Jang outside, give him a bit of a slap, and tell him if they ever saw him doing that again, they'd put him at the bottom of the ocean. They kept an eye out for him, and saw three months later in a local newspaper that he had been reported for misconduct around children. Dan and his friends go to the polcie and lodge a statement. It was forcibly covered up by the Church and the case had to be dropped."

Seungcheol stayed very silent. He watched as Vernon clicked "enter" on the PDF file, now posted on Twitter and Reddit, plus three major news platforms. Vernon and Seungcheol shook hands.

"Good luck." Seungcheol told the smirking Vernon.

"This is going to be really, really fucking fun." He rubbed his hands together maliciously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone that reads this, if you happen to be offended, frankly, I don't give a fuck. If you're going to sulk about a very present issue, you can fuck off. It's alright to support women who were abused, but when men who were raped and molested come into it, no one gives a fuck. And when it involves the Church or the Scouts, everyone just prays when they need to wake the fuck up. As they say, "Did every paedophile of the 20th Century become a Priest or a Scout master?"   
> People of our generation really do have no fucking understanding of absolutely anything. With this story-line, I hope it can provide some education


	48. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arianrhod brutalizes Chan on the fates of Seungcheol, Joshua, Jeonghan, Jihoon, Vernon and Sofia, and Minghao struggles as he bears witness to Junhui not remembering anything of their night together as he seduces Russian women on the dance floor

"When will he die?"

  
"Which one?"

  
"Choi, Hong, Yoon, Li and Chwe?"

  
A hesitant smile spread across Chan's face. "What?" He said weakly-toned to Arianrhod Tudur, Hitler's eldest daughter. Arianrhod held a cigarette inbetween her middle and index fingers, and she tilted her head to the side gracefully, gazing at Chan with intensely dark eyes. Her mouth bore dark, dark red lipstick, and she wore Lennon-glasses on her face in a tailored red wool-felt coat with a high Han-style neck and wide long-sleeves and the robe-coat's hem going down to her mid-calf, where she wore a dark red jersey skirt. It was a few inches longer, and she wore black high-heels.

  
"Seungcheol has some immune disease by the sounds of the reports, Joshua got fucked to within an inch of his life by Dad - but he's just a faggot and he's Dad is a thief, so, no loss to the earth - Jeonghan probably has AID's by now and will get killed at some stage, Li has killed too many people for Seungcheol's family to not go unnoticed, and the Chwe's trade secrets for money and make a jouranlism business out of it." Arianrhod gazed ahead, taking a suck on the cigarette before breathing it out in a way to Chan was majestically graceful.

  
"I can't say anything about that." Chan admitted.

  
"Of course you can, you simply won't." Arianrhod replied. She fixed him with a gaze. Chan nearly melted under it. She glanced down to his broken arm. She tutted. "Why are you suddenly the man's man and then you are so shy and pliant?"

  
Oh, fuck me...Chan thought, looking at the way her mouth pursed ever so slightly in despisation of him.

-

Minghao sung into the microphone, but watched sharply as Junhui danced with Phinneas's Firth's Russian-Jewish bird, smiling and chuckling gently at her soft-spoken accented words, dancing with her rather intimately. Phinneas was nowhere to be seen, been away in Scotland, his homeland. This was not the case for his woman, who was now here, dancing in Junhui's arms. Minghao wanted her to not be around here, because he knew Junhui would take to her like a duck to water.

  
"I'll be the bad guy now

  
But you know I ain't too proud..." 

Minghao sung, trying instead to focus on the beat behind him, closing his eyes to half-lids and drowning out all else around him so he didn't fuck up.

  
"I couldn't be there

  
Even when I tried -" The last word sung high gravitous and deep when Minghao suddenly got a flashback of Joshua's body. It was quite un-jazz-like, but no one seemed to mind. He suddenly attracted a applause for it, and he saw Junhui grin...down towards the Russian-Jew's mouth. Fuck him. But as for Joshua...now that Minghao had truly had him - only just the once - he craved him in a way that was obsessive and sickening. Minghao wondered if Joshua's thought about what had happened, but deep down, he knew it never even once crossed Joshua's mind.

  
"Do I keep believeing in it?

  
We do this revolt everytime

  
Times will change and we went with them

  
We fanned the flame because we could not be alone

  
We run around, listening to the same music

  
But we're running away, run away

  
I'm begging to God for you

  
You're begging to me to lose

  
And I won't settle down

  
Run away, but you come right back to me 

  
Run away, but I come right back to you..."


End file.
